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Wardens caucus reports on taxpayer burden
“Our analysis shows that rural household incomes are an average of $10,000 a year less than the Ontario average,”said St-Pierre, “and nearly one in five of our residents is a senior citizen, many of whom are on fixed incomes.” Stéphane Parisien, chief administrator for the United Counties of Prescott-Russell (UCPR) and for the EOWC this year, summa- rized the caucus presentation and white paper’s “Big Picture” conclusions during a report to the UCPR council March 26. “What we’re telling the province is: We need to partner with them,” said Parisien. “We are at a crossroad in terms of financial sustainability of local governments,” said St- Pierre. “Our residents simply cannot afford to pay the ever-increasing costs of munici- pal services, particularly when rural areas have so much infrastructure to be maintai- ned by a relatively small and widely-disper- sed population.” The EOWC represents all the county and municipal governments in Eastern Ontario. Both the white paper and the OGRA/ROMA presentation made several recommenda-
tions, including a demand that the province provide permanent and predictable rural infrastructure support funding for Eastern Ontariomunicipalities to help themwith re- building roads, bridges and other facilities growing old and close to the limit of their current lifespans. Other recommendations deal with issues like: policing costs; payment-in-lieu of taxes or revenue-sharing from the province for municipalities which have large amounts of either Crown land, managed forests, aggre- gate reserve sites, or other types of non- residential, non-commercial land which are subject to limitations on their property assessments but still need municipal roads
and other services; resolution of the farm tax situation; suitable property tax rates for all alternative energy projects, not just wind farms and turbines. The white paper also includes recommen- dations for the EOWC on working within its own region with local municipalities and with the Algonquin Nation on economic development, affordable housing, regional transit, youth employment and job training, and other strategies that can benefit both individual communities and the region as a whole. The complete EOWC White Paper on Ra- tepayer Affordability is available at www. eowc.org.
GREGGCHAMBERLAIN gregg.chamberlain@eap.on.ca
L’ORIGNAL | A new economic review re- port on Eastern Ontario states that the rural region has to work harder to make its limited taxation dollars stretch farther compared to other parts of the province. The Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus (EOWC) has released its latest “white paper” report on the state of affairs in the region. The EOWC White Paper on Ratepayer Affor- dability follows up and includes in greater detail much of the information that EOWC Chairman Jean-Paul St-Pierre presented during a series of meetings with ministers in February during the Ontario Good Roads Association/Rural Ontario Municipal Asso- ciation (OGRA/ROMA) conference in Toron- to. The focus of both concerns the challenge municipalities and taxpayers in the rural region face to maintain and improve basic services compared to their richer urban counterparts elsewhere in the province. PERTH | Police hope that someone will speak up and help them close a cold case file about a man gone missing for close to 14 years. Troy Edgell, 30, dropped his children off Sunday, June 4, 2000 at the home of a family member in the Cornwall area after a weekend visitation. It was the last time anyone reported ha- ving seen him or spoken to him. He had a habit of making frequent, almost daily calls to his children to talk with them. Edgell’s fa- mily filed a missing person report with the Cornwall Community Police on June 20 and the file has remained open since then. The day after Edgell was last seen, the car he was driving, a maroon-coloured 1987 Lincoln, was found burned out and abando- ned in the Lanark Highlands area northwest of Perth. The OPP took over the Edgell mis- sing person case on April 9, 2002. The pro- vincial government has a standing $50,000 reward for information that helps solve the case and leads to the arrest and conviction
Michael J. Houle Q.C./C.R., B.A., B. COMM., LL.B.
Reward for help finding missing man
ROCKLAND 613 446-6411
Nouvelles heures d’ouverture à Rockland CELL.: 613 794-0024 mjhoule@clllp.ca
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of whoever is responsible for Edgell’s disap- pearance. Anyone with information can call the Lanark OPP detachment at 613-267-2626 or the CrimeStoppers toll-free confidential tips line at 1-800-222-8477.
2737, rue Laurier St., Rockland ON 613 446-2181
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