Dear Editor:
(This letter was sent to Jennifer Murphy, Warden, Renfrew County.)
It appears that neither our Whitewater Region nor Renfrew County politicians have ever heard of common sense or fiscal accountability.
They seem to believe that buying a $300,000 vacant rail line at an annual maintenance cost of $50,00-$100,000 plus the annual tax revenue that is lost is going to attract thousands of tourists. A rail line they could have gotten for nothing. As was said in the presentation in Cobden: “It won’t cost the tax payers anything because the money is coming out of reserve”.
Does spending thousands of tax payers dollars to build active transportation lanes (bicycle paths) for people from Ottawa really attract cyclists that want to live in Renfrew county?
What should be important is helping their constituents and the businesses that pay taxes here. It’s sad that Renfrew County prefers a recreation trail and bicycle paths over tax base revenue.
Several thousand people and their children every year want to enjoy Muskrat Lake but can’t because politicians turn a blind eye to what’s important. Trailer parks on Muskrat Lake can’t keep people with children once they find out they can’t swim in the lake. There can be no further development around Muskrat Lake until corrective action is taken.
Renfrew County could have funded a study that would have developed a remediation plan for Muskrat Lake but chose not to. It was made clear to them in documents sent in December 2016 from the Muskrat Lake Association(MLA) that there was never any requirement for further accountability on the part of Renfrew County once they funded the study. The MLA would have used the remediation plan for submission with the “Application for Review”.
Once the “Application for Review” was approved by the Ontario Government the Government would then pass a Protection Plan and a Protection Act. Those documents would then have given “Leverage” to cleaning up Muskrat Lake.
That’s what was done for Lake Simcoe and that’s what is needed here.
Regards,
Gary Younghusband,
Secretary, Muskrat Lake Association
