Alberton council is resigned to the fact Fort Frances can now extend its boundaries to include the landfill site.
“Fort Frances can go ahead,” said Alberton Reeve John Milling. “I guess, according to the ministry regulations, it looks like they can unilaterally go ahead and take it.
“I’m very disappointed,” he added.
“As far as I can see, there’s nothing we can do. It’s probably a ‘fait accompli,’” echoed Coun. Roger Simms.
Miscampbell, the third municipality included in the proposal, accepted Fort Frances’ offer, out-numbering Alberton in a double-majority.
In a bid to extend their jurisdiction to include the landfill site in Alberton and the municipal airport in Miscampbell (land the town already owns), Fort Frances had offered to continue to pay both neighbouring municipalities’ taxes for the properties over the next four years.
Fort Frances made the proposal, in part, as “housekeeping” measures in case the neighbouring municipalities should amalgamate in the future.
Shortly after receiving the offer, Alberton council held a public session to gather input from ratepayers, followed by a special meeting of council where they voted against the proposal.
“It’s unanimous, we didn’t agree with the position Fort Frances held,” said Reeve Milling. “I wonder if I should re-iterate what the mayor said in his public statement. They want to move the boundaries and their dump is moving money and they don’t want to pay taxes.
“In our public meeting, Fort Frances publicly stated it costs $23.42 [per capita] to run a dump and that’s not comparing apples to apples because La Vallee can do it for dollars,” he added.
“We’ve done our job to try to get something for our municipality.”
The stickler for Alberton council was not the monetary value of the deal as much as a guarantee residents would still have access to the Fort Frances landfill site after its population reached 1,500–a clause on the original title.
“The main thing we wanted was confirmation that after our population reached 1,501, our community will still be able to have continued access to our dump,” said Coun. Simms.
During a ratepayers’ meeting, Miscampbell residents decided to accept the Fort Frances proposal, in part, because the town had been maintaining a road lying in its jurisdiction for years at costs the township would not have been able to afford.
“Yes, we did, we sent them a letter,” Fran Hahkala, the secretary for the Miscampbell local roads board, confirmed Monday.
Fort Frances council has since received the letter from Miscampbell, and will discuss the response and annexation proposal during an in-camera session of the committee of the whole.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
