Northern Ontario town accepts $300k from province to avoid service shutdown

A town in northern Ontario has accepted $300,000 in interim funding from the provincial government hours before it was threatening to shut down services and layoff all staff. 

The Township of Fauquier-Strickland, east of Kapuskasing on Highway 11, announced in early July that it was in a $2.5-million operating deficit and without help from the province, it would have to start shutting down services by Aug. 1. 

At a special meeting Thursday night, council voted to accept a one-time grant from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

It will allow the township to maintain garbage collection, keep the dump open, retain its volunteer fire department and continue limited administrative functions with a staff of three. However, many services will be scaled back, such as facility cleaning and road maintenance.

"Services, no matter what, are still going to be bare bones for the foreseeable future," said Shannon Pawlikowski, the Fauquier's director of municipal services.

The provincial money also comes with several conditions. The town must pass a budget by the end of August, begin collecting property taxes by the end of September, implement a freeze on discretionary spending and submit regular financial reports to the ministry.

Despite the emergency grant which will come in instalments over the next three months, Pawlikowski said the province hasn't provided guidance on how to stabilize finances long-term.

"So we're kind of stuck in a bit of limbo here, to be honest," she said at the meeting.

Tensions rise in town hall

The special meeting drew a tense crowd that packed the community hall. It included a rare 10-minute question period, where many took aim at Fauquier Mayor Madeleine Tremblay, who has served on council since 2003 and became mayor in 2006.

She reminded the crowd that in the small community of 500 people, being the mayor isn't a full-time job and she is only of five votes around the council table. 

"I feel the sentiment in this room says we need to change management to be able to fix this," one citizen said during the question period. 

"We can't move forward if we're just going to make the same mistakes with the same people in charge."

Pawlikowski said that she has tried to trim down the budget, but that hiking property taxes by upwards of 200 per cent was the only way to have enough operating funds to get through the rest of the year. 

"Everybody who knows me will tell you that I've been like my head has been exploding, trying to cut things off the budget. I have cut as much as I can, and I've got it down to 196 per cent I don't know what else to cut," she said. 

The letter from municipal affairs minister Rob Flack claims Fauquier's financial crisis was the "result of a series of unfortunate fiscal decisions made by council in recent years."

That was echoed by his associate minister, Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Graydon Smith, speaking to reporters in Sudbury earlier on Thursday. 

"I don't want to speculate on what the exact solution is for that community, because I think there's still work to be done to assess how this happened and what can be done in the future to avoid it happening again," he said. 

"The money that was invested, $300,000 is emergency dollars. It's not 'Here's all the money to make your problems go away' dollars. It's 'Here's the dollars to keep services running for today.'"