EAR FALLS – The Kenora District Municipal Association is asking member municipalities to triple what they pay into the organization, but the KDMA president says that's still not much.
“It’s very minimal,” said Kevin Kahoot, who is also mayor of Ear Falls, on Monday.
The extra money is needed “to lobby on our municipalities’ behalf, whether it be with the provincial or federal government,” he said.
The municipal association wrapped up its annual general meeting Saturday in Kenora with an increase in the levy from 10 cents per person to 30 cents being the purpose of one of 13 resolutions passed.
The hike will mean an extra $200 or so in levy for Ear Falls next year, Kahoot said.
“It’s all relative to the size of the communities,” he said. “But even in Kenora and Dryden, it’s a bigger number on their bottom line but minimal in relation to what their overall budget is.”
And 30 cents is only one-third as much as what the Rainy River District Municipal Association levies on a per capita basis, he added.
Kahoot termed the KDMA’s first in-person conference since before the COVID pandemic “a huge success on two fronts.”
One of those aspects, he said, was the regional meeting’s return to Kenora, “which I like to call the flagship of KDMA.”
The other area of success was the opportunity for councillors from the KDMA’s municipal governments – particularly first-term councillors – to meet in-person and network with one another, he said.
“The biggest takeaway I got from some of my (Ear Falls) council – the newer ones who were there – was that no matter how different we are in geography or size, there’s a lot of common problems.”
Another of the resolutions passed by municipal delegates calls for the reinstatement of a “northern allowance” tax break for Sioux Lookout residents.
People living in the municipality that is roughly 70 kilometres north of Highway 17 face higher living costs than communities farther south, but the Canada Revenue Agency removed Sioux Lookout from the list of communities qualifying for a northern tax deduction in the 1990s.
The KDMA conference also approved a resolution from Kenora council calling for more infrastructure funding from the province to maintain the city’s more than 20 bridges.
Other municipalities in the KDMA include Ignace, Pickle Lake, Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls, Machin and Red Lake.
