Richard Connelly
Special to Niagara Now/The Lake Report

We lived in West Carleton Township, a rural municipality on the west side of the City of Ottawa adjacent to Kanata. There were several small towns in our township, including Carp, Dunrobin, Kinburn, Constance Bay and many clustered areas of residential development along the Ottawa River and in the hills around Carp.

The City of Ottawa was poorly run for decades and was incapable of the management of their infrastructure. Roads, sewers, sewage treatment, water treatment and supply, storm water system management, storm sewers and general lack of maintenance of services in the city were numerous issues that led to local increased taxation and reflected their inability to comprehensively maintain infrastructure.

Combined sewers (sanitary combined with storm rainfall) are still in operation in the core, causing overloading of many of the sewage treatment facilities. The City of Ottawa was in dire need of new sources of income through taxation and development charges.

Amalgamation affected many of the smaller and rural municipalities, causing a significant increase in residential and commercial taxes. The rural areas lost all contact with their elected officials. West Carleton Township had approximately 10 elected members of our original council. The revised organization left us with one elected official.

Our ability to influence the operations in our municipality was reduced to almost zero. Our well-run municipality lost all control of our well managed infrastructure and our reserve funds. 

The city initiated amalgamation for all of the municipalities in the greater Ottawa area. The process took three years, and more than $3 million, according to Albert Bowers, the former reeve of Osgoode Township, was spent on the integration process. The well-run municipalities with reserve funds suffered under the new government.

The city benefitted from the assumption of the reserve funds, and the local municipalities suffered from the significant existing debt of the City of Ottawa. Ottawa was notorious for carrying a huge debt and the poor state of their infrastructure.  

I was recently working for a land development client on a residential subdivision adjacent to Almonte, Ont. The City of Ottawa had spread to within about a 10-minute drive from the edge of the town of Almonte.

The local advantage of the home builders was the cost of building permits. In Almonte, permits were $20,000 less than in the City of Ottawa. Almonte was a bedroom community with lower taxes and lower infrastructure costs.

The amalgamated City of Ottawa had many capital works projects while we lived in Manotick (in the former Township of Rideau).  The history of the capital works projects, with few exceptions, was significant overruns of construction budgets, work not being completed on time, regular replacement of contractors and major disruption to communities.

The current and mostly inoperable transit system is another typical major project that is well over budget and years of past due on completion. The management of this project by Ottawa is a complete disaster.

In our last two years in Manotick, and to show how desperate Ottawa was for new sources of income, the City of Ottawa had circulated letters to rural homeowners (who rely on private water and sewage systems) indicating the intent to place meters on private wells with monthly service charges for water to be paid to the city.

The rural owners successfully objected to this illogical tax, but the next round was an intended tariff for storm water management. 

No one really understood this new tax. The scenario was if you had a ditch or drainage system in front of your home, that tariff would be charged for that service. 

There were no local signs of additional maintenance work in Manotick provided by the city. The tariff was applied and has been issued for several years. This was somewhat like the tariff situation with the U.S. — no benefit and a higher cost of living.

There will be no advantage for amalgamation within adjacent municipalities to NOTL. We have a special place on this earth and we need to focus on maintaining and protecting our unique community.

Amalgamation with local adjacent municipalities with failing infrastructure will result in higher cost of living, more taxes and less service.

That is clearly evident from the example of the City of Ottawa and the severe impact on the rural residents in the Ottawa area.

Richard Connelly is a Niagara-on-the-Lake resident and the past owner of an engineering firm in Ottawa.