New Website Poll – Excessive Policies & High Rates

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Historically, previous Midland Town councils have enthusiastically exceeded policy requirements and standards set by higher legislative authorities.  Most other community leaders often reject these standards due to the significant costs incurred and the barriers they create to current and future community growth.

Midland already has one of the highest property tax rates in Simcoe County which is a direct result of repeatedly implementing flawed, comprehensive, misguided and over-reaching standards.  These excessive policies and high rates discourage investment and continually contribute to the growing financial burden on local residents and businesses.

Septic inspection, backflow retrofits, Source Water Protection (SPP) By-laws and complicated shoreline studies are just a few examples of costly, misguided theories and policies significantly preventing our community from moving towards revitalization and growth.

Our newly elected council has identified and seeks to remedy some of these punitive by-laws.  Please help support our new council in their efforts to fix decades of misguided local legislation by implementing supportive policies promoting growth and prosperity for our community.

Given our limited financial and staff resources coupled with our growth challenges, we believe we do not need, nor can we afford to be “a significant risk taker in developing unfriendly business policy” and ask you to weigh in on our poll below.

“As a resident of the Town of Midland, I support & encourage my municipal leadership to manage and operate the resources of this community in a responsible and environmentally sound manner and adhere to the Provincial and Federal laws and regulations that govern such, and nothing more. I expect my local leaders to embrace the “minimums only” so defined in these policies and refrain from adding unwanted complexity and costs”. 

7 Comments on "New Website Poll – Excessive Policies & High Rates"

  1. As property and business owners in Midland ON, we wholeheartedly endorse Town Council rescinding the Backflow By-Law-2015 in it’s entirety and instead direct Staff to rely standards contained in the current Ontario Building Code Act. Furthermore, we also that feel this bylaw places a completely unnecessary burden on property owners within the community and does little – or nothing – to mitigate the risk of injury due to backflow. If the Town feels differently, I would then ask the Town to publish an appropriate Risk Analysis Study (which surely must already exist) and to specifically detail and identify all past injuries which have occurred in this municipality due to backflow.

  2. I disagree with this motion. There is a reason that many engineers and engineering students refer to the building code as being “the minimum standard you have to follow not to get thrown into jail”. While I am not opposed to reexamining the policies to see if there are any that are not accomplishing their objective, I applaud the council for aiming for more than just the minimum.

  3. As a property and business owner, I completely endorse Town Council rescinding the Backflow By-Law and the associated annual compliance directive. The existing by-law penalizes owners who pose virtually zero risk to the water system. It is relatively easy to identify those few enterprises whose operations pose risks and deal with them directly. For small retail shops, this is just a tax grab and annoyance.

  4. Agree

  5. Over regulate…OR! We were required to install and don’t quite understand the need. Where there is a need to meet the OBC the Building Officials of the Town do not appear to be consistent. We live on Aberdeen and there is NOT a house that probably meets the OBC as it pertains to the stucco on the exterior of the houses other than the original houses that were built with a “DRYVIT” system. According to OUR “Chief Building Inspector” the town has not inspected the stucco on the exterior of our houses other than the first two that were built some 12 years ago. This affects ALL off the home owners on Aberdeen that have some “Hybrid” stucco system that has not been installed to OBC. Mold of varying natures including “BLACK” mold is apparent on the houses. Our plans submitted by our builder for building permits show our system as being “Drivit” however the Chief Building Inspector cannot confirm. Meets OBC…not!

  6. totally agree. We already have enough rules and regulations. Council should concentrate on new industry and new jobs.

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