There was no press conference to announce it, no end credits rolling across a screen, but it appears as though Flin Flon’s cottage-country annexation debate is over.
Recall that the previous city council had attempted to secure annual funding from cottagers who live just outside city limits.
Also recall that there was virtually no support for the proposal from cottagers, many of whom were offended by the thought of paying money in exchange for no services and no right to vote in civic elections.
Over time, talks drifted away from cottagers co-paying an array of city expenses and focused only on fire protection from municipal firefighters. When there was no agreement on what fire protection was worth, the city ended that service in mid 2013.
The previous council’s original idea was to apply to the Manitoba government to annex some or all of cottage country if a cost-sharing deal could not be achieved.
Would the provincial government have okayed such a dramatic and contentious transfer of land? Would hundreds of people really be expected to pay thousands of dollars worth of property taxes to a city 10 or 20 km away? It never seemed the least bit probable, though stranger things have happened.
Still, the argument that area cottagers bear a civic duty to pay the City of Flin Flon an annual fee – that they are for most intents and purposes Flin Flon residents – was hardly a new one.
Two decades ago, when Flin Flon unveiled its 1996 budget, The Reminder quoted one taxpayer as saying: “I pay $3,000 in taxes and a guy down the road [outside city limits] doesn’t pay any. Yet he comes in the city and uses the same services I do for the same cost.”
It is interesting that cottagers are always the ones singled out for a municipal fee. People from Cranberry Portage, Snow Lake, Pelican Narrows, Sandy Bay and Deschambault Lake also use “the same services” as Flin Flonners every single day, yet no one ever suggests Flin Flon annex those communities.
Since the height of the annexation debate in 2012, 2013 and 2014, Flin Flon has elected a new city council and a new MLA, and is governed by a new provincial government. No one is publicly talking up annexation. Cottagers I speak with say all is quiet. What was once portrayed as a pressing issue has evaporated.
The only question left now is whether cottagers are collectively willing to pay Flin Flon for year-round fire protection, which would allow them to access 911 phone service. So far there has been no groundswell of support for this idea.
General Douglas MacArthur famously said, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” The same is often true of controversial proposals with little hope of success, cottage-country annexation being the latest example. No one can predict whether this debate will some day resurface, but we can safely say that at this moment, it is dormant if not dead.
In terms of regional unity, that’s a good thing. If our region is to move forward with economic-development initiatives now being discussed among local mayors, unity – not division and argument – will be key.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
