With just one regular meeting remaining before having a break over the holidays, Meaford’s council is winding down what has been another busy year.
Council’s last meeting of 2025 will be held on Monday, December 15, and councillors will return to the council chamber for their first meeting of 2026 on January 12.
2025 has been a busy, and at times frustrating, year for council, which didn’t approve the 2025 municipal budget until April, not in December of 2024 as they had hoped.
When the first draft of the original 2025 municipal budget was presented to council on November 4, 2024, council had expected to have approved the 2025 budgets during their December 9 meeting. However, the departure of the CAO on November 26 resulted in a delay of the budget process. As initially presented on November 4, the draft budget, which was divided into ‘core services’ and ‘elective services’, would have meant an increase of roughly 36 percent in 2025 for Meaford ratepayers, had that draft budget been approved as presented.
By the third version of the budget, presented to council in March, council had a budget they were comfortable with, ultimately approving the 2025 municipal budget with a 6.86 percent tax rate increase (5.29 percent blended) on April 7.
Just four months after CAO Kymm Buckham departed, council had found a new CAO, hiring former Town of the Blue Mountains CAO Shawn Everitt, who assumed the post in April.
After a chaotic few months to start the year, council had some good news to report in June after the reopening of the freshly replaced ‘Sydenham Twin Bridges’ on the Holland-Sydenham Townline after nine long years.
On January 29, 2016, the Municipality of Meaford implemented the emergency closure of the bridges due to the results of the Ontario Structural Inspection Manual (OSIM) and recommendations from Ainley and Associates Structural Engineers, who prepared the 2016 State of the Infrastructure (SOTI) report for bridges in Meaford.
In the years that followed, successive councils had attempted to find a way to fund the replacement of the bridges which are located on a boundary road with the Township of Chatsworth. Chatsworth refused to help fund the replacement of the bridges, insisting that they should remain closed.
Chatsworth’s unwillingness to engage in a new environmental assessment and ultimately share in the cost of replacing the bridges had placed Meaford’s council between a rock and a hard place, and staff advised that Meaford’s options were limited. Meaford’s council ultimately decided to replace the bridges without financial support from Chatsworth, and in June the bridges officially reopened, ending a nine year long ordeal.
Top of mind for many this year, and for the previous five years, has been the TC Energy pumped storage proposal, which has loomed over this municipality and council. While the proposed pumped storage facility is still in the early stages of testing and studies in order to determine if the multi-billion dollar project is even feasible, council has faced significant backlash from opponents of the project. I suspect that will continue for the duration, particularly if the project is ultimately allowed to move forward.
In November council approved a plan to conduct baseline water testing on properties in close proximity to the Base. The motion brought forward on November 10 by the Deputy Mayor directs municipal staff to engage a consulting firm to undertake “baseline water sampling and testing for carcinogens, heavy metals and toxins, including but not limited to: PFAS, dioxins, furan, etc. as recommended in the PSAC motion, from specific locations in proximity to the proposed site of the OPS project no later than Q2 of 2026.”
As I wrote in our December 4 print newspaper, there was an excellent presentation made to council last month, a presentation that had previously been made to the Pumped Storage Advisory Committee, regarding the contaminants that are present on the local military base, and how they might become a problem if the proposed pumped storage facility is ultimately built. The presenter, Paul Young, a Meaford resident with an impressive resume in the world of water testing, stressed the importance of conducting significant testing now and during construction should the project move forward, as well as after the facility is up and running. It is no secret that after decades of artillery fire the land at the Base is polluted with a number of potentially dangerous contaminants. As Mr. Young pointed out, they are currently largely contained and undisturbed, but once the digging and blasting begins, in his words, you could be opening a “Pandora’s box”, and so it is wise to conduct extensive testing now and throughout the process, and those test results should be closely monitored and publicly available.
2025 also saw the resignation of three-term councillor Steve Bartley, with a year remaining in this term of council. Council sought candidates to fill Bartley’s seat, ultimately appointing Eric Ennis, who had run unsuccessfully in the 2022 municipal election to fill the seat.
While there have been many serious issues for council to grapple with this year, there have also been celebrations. Mayor Ross Kentner and Deputy Mayor Shirley Keaveney, along with other members of council, have attended a significant number of ribbon-cutting events this year as new businesses open in this municipality.
With business interest in the municipality growing, last month council approved the purchase of roughly 26 acres of industrial/commercial land at a cost of nearly $3.7 million. Having the land in the municipal inventory will help the municipality to better respond when businesses come knocking looking to set up shop in the Municipality of Meaford.
Later this month (December 22) municipal budget season will begin, and the goal is to have the budget finalized by mid-January of 2026.
While council has had a productive year, with less than one year left in their four-year term, council has yet to achieve something that they identified during the 2022 municipal election campaign as one of their top priorities for this term of council: the implementation of a short-term accommodations bylaw to regulate the growing short-term rental industry in the municipality.
I am sure council will want to see some movement on that issue prior to the coming municipal election, which will be held on October 26, 2026.
So, it has been a busy 2025, and with the next municipal election now less than a year away, 2026 will no doubt be a busy year as well.
