The rising budgets for external boards and agencies, along with the future of the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital (LPH) property, were top priorities for the Thunder Bay team at this year’s Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) conference.
This year’s conference took place in Toronto and wrapped up earlier this week. The event allows smaller municipalities in Ontario to discuss issues directly with provincial ministers and staff.
“One of the big main issues that we wanted to get across to the province is our inability to regulate tax levy increases from outside boards and agencies,” said Coun. Trevor Giertuga, who chairs the city’s intergovernmental affairs committee.
Giertuga mentioned that council asked both internal departments and external boards and agencies to limit budget increases to no more than 2.6 percent for 2026.
However, while internal departments met that target, outside boards and agencies did not.
“The police came in at 9.1 percent,” he said. “That’s out of our purview.”
LISTEN | The City of Thunder Bay’s delegation has returned from this year’s Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference in Toronto. Hear how things went:
Superior Morning6:51Trevor Giertuga/Shelby Ch’ng: ROMA Debrief
The City of Thunder Bay’s delegation has returned from this year’s Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference in Toronto. Hear about how things went.
“We don’t have any regulations for these boards and agencies,” Giertuga stated. “They levy us and we’ve got to pay it.”
An additional concern was the future of the 144-acre, provincially-owned LPH property located on Algoma Street North. The hospital itself closed down in 2018.
“We would like to get our hands on (the LPH property) and to have control over what happens to that property,” said Coun. Shelby Ch’ng, a member of the intergovernmental affairs committee. “We’ve been given signals that the province is looking at divesting, but first they need to go through their ministry to make sure they don’t need the property.”
“And we’re assured that Thunder Bay is on the list to notify when that does happen.”
The LPH property has been marked as “under review” on the provincial surplus property website for years. CBC reached out to Infrastructure Ontario for an update on Thursday but did not receive a response.
Highway safety improvements needed
Rick Dumas, mayor of Marathon and president of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA), also attended the ROMA conference where he raised several concerns, including asking for reduced population requirements for accessing the Building Faster Fund from the province.
“Outside of the city of Thunder Bay, all the rest of us are under 20,000 population,” Dumas noted. “Most of us don’t get opportunities like these funds to build homes in our community; however, we still need homes here.”
Highway safety in northern areas was another significant topic Dumas brought up.
“We always leave a day early because we know during winter there will likely be some sort of closure due to storms or accidents,” Dumas explained. “It might not last all day but could take several hours.”
“That’s an added cost for all of us when traveling for hotel stays.”LISTEN | A look at what happened at this year’s Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference:
7:27A look at what happened at this year’s Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference
Rick Dumas was one northern delegate present at ROMA who joined us afterward discussing what transpired during this year’s event.
NOMA has been advocating for twinning highways wherever possible throughout northern Ontario while also proposing a two-plus-one highway system elsewhere.
A two-plus-one highway consists of a central passing lane alternating directions every few kilometers along with a median designed specifically preventing head-on collisions.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford spoke about highway safety during his address at ROMA stating that they plan on investing $30 billion over ten years into roads as well as bridges throughout these regions.
“It has been very disturbing hearing about all those accidents occurring up north,” he remarked.” We’re doing everything we can regarding twinning roads or implementing (two-plus-one) systems aimed toward making travel safer while ensuring timely plowing/salting operations following snowstorms since nobody wants tragedies around holiday periods.”
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