Area cabin owners have overwhelmingly rejected a City of Flin Flon offer that would have brought year-round fire protection to cottage subdivisions while possibly taking annexation off the table.
With nearly 200 cottagers voting on the proposal Wednesday, only one was in favour of seeing year-round and seasonal cabin residents pay $650 and $250 a year, respectively.
“The committee just unanimously recommends that the city’s offer be rejected,” Dave Kennedy, a member of the negotiating committee for North of 54 Cottage Owners Association, told cottagers gathered at the Creighton Community Hall.
Kennedy said the city “has not moved” on its offer and that the “recreation” portion of its proposed fee included not just recreational services, but also library, airport, cemetery and recycling services.
He said the committee felt cottagers would support a fee for recreation alone because “it’s a tangible product that requires support” and is used by many people.
But the city’s offer amounted to “lumping all the city services” together, Kennedy said.
The city’s 10-year offer would have delivered municipal fire protection to Manitoba cottage subdivisions near Flin Flon for the first time since mid-2013. It would have also come with a pledge that the city would not attempt to annex cottage country.
But at Wednesdays’ meeting, questions surrounded whether the current city council can indeed make such a commitment around annexation.
Kennedy, a former city councillor, said that “strictly speaking,” one council cannot encumber future councils with a decision.
“However, if you come to a long-term agreement in which there is some contractual obligations involved and it’s been in good faith, I think it’d be very difficult to rescind that – not impossible, but very difficult,” he said.
Kennedy added that cottagers would have “a very strong case” to maintain a no-annexation guarantee for at least the length of any contract signed with the city.
The lack of total certainty around annexation had Dave Blatherwick, a Big Island resident, labelling annexation “a scare tactic” to draw money from cottagers.
Dale Powell, who also sits on North of 54’s negotiating committee, said the committee had offered the city annual payments of $200 and $50 from year-round and seasonal cottagers, respectively.
He said the payments would have increased annually at the rate of inflation and that by securing fire protection, cottagers would be able to obtain 911 emergency phone service.
Powell said the city declined an offer to send the matter to mediation. The city’s position is that the two sides were too far apart financially for mediation to make sense.
Powell added that North of 54’s offer mirrored agreements already in place between the Town of The Pas and its surrounding cottagers. In a previous interview, he said the North of 54 offer was actually superior because fees increase with inflation and the recreation portion is mandatory, not voluntary as it is near The Pas.
Wednesday’s near-unanimous vote could see North of 54 examine alternatives for fire protection.
There has been talk among cottagers of approaching the Town of Creighton and LUD of Cranberry Portage with offers, though both communities refused formal fire service agreements last year.
There has also been discussion around North of 54 establishing its own fire department as has been done at the Paint Lake cottage subdivision near Thompson, among others.
The City of Flin Flon withdrew fire protection from cottage areas in mid-2013 after years of subsidizing the service from its own coffers.
Although Kennedy told Wednesday’s meeting that the city “has not moved,” its offer to charge $250 for fire protection represents a drop from its initial proposal of $300.
