this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
38 points (100.0% liked)
Ontario
3676 readers
75 users here now
A place to discuss all the news and events taking place in the province of Ontario, Canada.
Rules
- No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- No porn.
- No Ads / Spamming.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why should they want that? Rural councilors in cities are elected to look out for their constiuents' interests. You don't get to assimilate townships and tax rural voters at the same rate as urban voters, and then reduce their functional services to bottom-tier levels to fund urban interests "for the greater good" without pushback.
Mostly on board with not assimilating townships, but it's a little bit the other way around with tax revenue. It's extremely expensive to provide municipal services to suburban and rural customers. Cities, with their much better tax revenue per acre, tend to subsidize rural customers.
Consider sewer, water, electricity, roads. All that extra pipe and wire to service a whole bunch of spread-out residences is quite expensive, and the revenue obtained from those residences is small. Which is why you have all these little towns going bankrupt, because their finances don't make sense.
I am on board with towns being able to manage their own affairs, but unsustainable development without the tax base to support it is causing a LOT of trouble. They spend without taxing.
I'm not trying to suggest these numbers solve the gap (I have no idea what the gap is) but Ottawa in particular does charge different development fees depending on if the development is inside the greenbelt, and if they are serviced or not. Different dwelling types within those areas have different fees too.
Further to that, the Village of Richmond has extra charges specific to the cost of sanitary sewers and so does a specific development in Greely.
Hydro is not managed at the municipal level.