It has become clear that the District of Muskoka doesn’t have the guts to stand up to developers and demand higher development charges in order to tackle our escalating debt load.

Despite a previous promise to pay down Muskoka’s soaring liabilities, councillors have passed on the opportunity to significantly up development charges and alleviate the financial burden currently being experienced by those using municipal services.

It seems the interests of taxpayers have taken a back seat to the interests of developers.

While it is true that increasing development charges by the recommended 900 per cent could drive away business, councillors did have other options. They could have upped the charges incrementally over the next several years, raising the kind of revenue Muskoka needs to pay for growth without threatening new investments in our communities.

Raising development charges by only 10 per cent means residents will continue to be saddled with the lion’s share of Muskoka’s $100-million debt. It means that we, the existing taxpayers, will continue to subsidize new growth not only for future homeowners, but also for new businesses and corporations, some of whom have multimillion-dollar budgets.

Not only is this grossly unfair, it demonstrates, once again, just what poor stewards our councillors have been when it comes to managing the public purse.

The reality is that Muskoka’s financial situation is almost no better now than it was this spring, when councillors pledged to take the bull by the horns and balance the budget.

Many said they were prepared to swallow the “bitter pill” of high development charges in order to address the situation.

But months later, we still have no significant source of revenue to pay down the debt.

Instead, we have an upper-tier municipality that plans to spend upwards of $130 million over the next five years, with no strategy to raise just under half of that amount.

Sound familiar?

It has become abundantly clear that our councillors either do not know how to manage our money, or do not care enough to even attempt to do so.

The responsibility we have entrusted to them has obviously been too difficult to handle. The sad reality is that in the end, we all will pay a very high price for their poor stewardship.

JL