Flin Flon city council is open to cheap lots and nuclear-waste studies, but not paying for public land within its borders and running the airport at a loss.
Those were among the themes as Mayor George Fontaine candidly delivered a wide-ranging address to the Flin Flon and District Chamber of Commerce last week.
When asked whether council would sell residential lots for $1 to spark housing construction, Fontaine said there is room for price negotiation on a lot-by-lot basis.
“It would be to our advantage to have someone living on them and we’re not concerned about the sale price as much as we are about having someone build on them,” he told 16 guests gathered at the Friendship Centre Restaurant on Dec. 10.
But Fontaine said it would be a different story if a lot were outside an existing neighbourhood and required servicing.
Moving on to the potential of nuclear waste storage next door, Fontaine said he and his council have no objections to Creighton’s ongoing study of the concept.
“...we’re not uncomfortable with the idea of our neighbour following a course of study to see whether it’s suitable or not,” he said. “So to the point that they’re at so far, we’re not going to take a negative stand. We’ve seen no reason to take a negative stand, so that’s where we’re going to be sitting with respect to that.”
Fontaine said several councillors visited an Ontario site where nuclear waste is stored above-ground as opposed to below-ground as would be the case in Creighton.
He called an underground repository “multitudes of times more safe” than the current storage method for spent nuclear fuel rods.
Fontaine pulled no punches as he shifted to the Manitoba government’s policy on Crown lands that lay within Flin Flon and other municipalities.
Among those properties is the parkland along Kingsway Blvd. – where council has floated the idea of opening residential lots – and the site of the former armoury.
The city has applied to assume ownership of such sites, but that comes with a price tag.
“We’ve served notice to the province that we would like all Crown lands within the borders of Flin Flon transferred to us, and we don’t really want to pay them anything for them,” said Fontaine, a retired teacher. “It’s a bit of a cash cow for them. When we want a piece of land – it’s sitting right next to us, it’s our land – but we have to pay the provincial government to get our own land to move ahead with.”
Fontaine said the process to acquire Crown land is “a long-term project” that can cause parties interested in a piece of property to lose interest.
“We want control of what’s within our border,” added the mayor.
Switching gears, Fontaine spoke of failed efforts to get neighbouring communities to share in the cost of the Flin Flon Municipal Airport, which he called a “regional facility.”
“We approached Creighton one time with it and the response we got from Creighton was, ‘Sure, we’ll join you in operating as long as there’s no cost to us,” he said.
Fontaine said “there’s no way in the world” that Flin Flon will run the airport at a loss, adding council would raise fees if it had to.
The mayor’s 40-minute chamber address covered a lot of familiar ground, including the city’s offer to resume fire protection for cottage subdivisions at a cost of $300 per property.
He said he has not fielded any requests since going public with Flin Flon’s willingness to provide fire service to specific cottage neighbourhoods rather than treating all cottages as a single bloc.
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“I don’t know if people are just comfortable not having fire service or if they’ve got an alternate plan,” Fontaine said. “I’m not sure.”
Fontaine also touched on Flin Flon’s quest to have residents of the region share in the cost of operating the Whitney Forum, Aqua Centre and Flin Flon Community Hall.
Flin Flon taxpayers are “carrying three of the main buildings that everybody’s using,” he said, “and we’re trying to get that across to everybody: ‘Look, if you want to be able to continue with those, you’re going to have to, at some point, get into discussions to make sure that those places are sustainable.’”
Fontaine warned that “at some point” there will be a “breaking point” where the most heavily-taxed Flin Flonners will call for the closure of public facilities due to rising costs.
“I don’t want to see that happen,” he said. “The position on council has been to keep everything open. It’s been to try and maintain (facilities). But we have to make people outside of our little realm recognize that there’s a cost to this and if you want access to it, you’re going to have to join in.”
Fontaine said he believes Flin Flonners notice that their taxes are “considerably higher than their neighbours – and they’re higher because they’re carrying these kinds of costs.”
As he has multiple times before, the first-term mayor reiterated that user fees for non-Flin Flonners will not make up regional cost disparities.
He described new user fees at the Aqua Centre as “an example to show people, ‘Look, you need to join in and pay a share,’ but that isn’t going to cut our deficit.”
Back on taxation, Fontaine acknowledged concerns over a new city policy – raising taxes on low-end homes and lowering them on the high end – but defended the approach.
“If we keep boosting our upper end (taxes), nobody is building, so we have to try and do the leveling,” he said.
Regarding Flin Flon’s latest massive infrastructure project, the water treatment plant, Fontaine said the city is now “second to no one in terms of quality of water.”
“We are in a good position in that we haven’t got any large overruns,” he said.
Though some have interpreted council’s various proposals as a sign that Flin Flon is in survival mode, Fontaine stressed the city is “pushing not just for survival, but for growth.”
“When we speak to higher levels of government, we say, ‘We want to be treated as a community that has a longer life,’” he said. “For a long time we were treated as a community, and we treated ourselves as a community with, say, a five-year shelf life. Well, that had a restriction on the community in what people were likely to do in this community, but now people are saying, ‘No, no, we’re here (to stay).’”
Mayor George Fontaine (from left) spoke of spurring housing construction, storage of spent nuclear fuel rods (a model of which is held by Joanne Facella of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization), and funding for the airport.
FILE PHOTOS
