| 1247 Lakeshore Road, Sarnia, ON N7S 2L1 Nov. 14/99 Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, 777 Bay St. Toronto, ON M5G 2E5 Dear Hon. Mr. Tony Clement, For quick reference, please find enclosed a copy of your letter of Dec. 7/98 and another from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs to me dated May 18/99. Now that you are handling this portfolio I would again like to revisit this "paved walkway" on Lakeshore Road in Sarnia, this time in the context of municipal restructuring. It has been widely reported in the local press that Sarnia Mayor Bradley and Lambton County Warden McNeil have asked your Ministry for direction on how to proceed with municipal restructuring. Despite receiving no specific instructions, local politicians are occasionally meeting to try to reconfigure local government to move to the Ministry's criteria. Your goals of providing lower taxes, enhanced or improved services, less local politicians and bureaucracy, and clear lines of responsibility and accountability are indeed, eminently sensible. Although the local initiative is welcome to me but reluctantly pursued, I anticipate that despite their best efforts, the local politicians will need a very big nudge from Ontario. My purpose in writing again is to give you my perspective and so participate in this process. First, I refer to the Vision 2020 report of Nov. '95 prepared by the Sarnia-Lambton Council for Economic Renewal, a 16-member coalition of private and public sector leaders. Quoting directly from the report on the Weaknesses of the area the following leads the list: "Conflict between different groups in the community resulting in wasted and fragmented effort. (City and County governments were repeatedly cited in the responses)" The desired clear lines of responsibility and accountability got very muddled in the rebuild of Lakeshore Road and its dangerous paved walkway. Despite this project being engineered by Sarnia, the city chorus was in ironic harmony: "If this was a city road, it would have been built to city standards." In turn the county replied: "We don't have too!" Yet again, after the aforementioned report was released, a hugely preferred location (75% of respondents to an informal newspaper poll considering 4 choices) for a $15 Million or so multi-use complex for Sarnia was ignored. This was because the desired land was in the adjacent island village of Point Edward, population 2,200. You'll recall the Progressive Conservative caucus gathering at the Holiday Inn in Point Edward much earlier this year. Even though the village's residents would seem to prefer their independence, the reality is that their separate administration is a roadblock to what should be integrated development for a Sarnia population of 78,000. Although the attached letters spell out municipal issue, the fact remains it is provincial law that defines the terms on how municipalities are structured. Clearly, local structure is very much in need of repair here. As it is, I, along with very many disgruntled others, feel discriminated by a provincial law that disenfranchises our rights of equality as found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It would, of course, be rather a bother and wasteful of energy to initiate a class action. A timely provincial intervention could at last, hopefully, solve this well publicized chronic local problem. Yours very truly, George Sunaitis c.c. Caroline Di Cocco, MPP Sarnia-Lambton |
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