Feature Article January 8, 2003
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb HomeOf money, coffee and waterby Wilma Kenny As things stand, 324 businesses and households in Sydenham village are going to be required to share the cost of over a million and a half dollars for a municipal water system. It comes out to an average of $5000 per household, plus installation and ongoing costs.
Perhaps because the houses in the village are old, most of the folks who can afford it have built larger new houses up on the hills or along the lake, where the views are better. As a result, many of the people now living in the village are the ones with relatively low or fixed incomes. At least 25 householders, not counting the people in the seniors apartments, are single women, generally a very low income group.
While nobody has an extra $5,000 or $6,000 lying around these days, many village residents feel that paying out that much money, even over a 15-year period at 8% interest (the Townships offer), will be a hardship.
At the time of amalgamation, the four districts that came together to form South Frontenac Township firmly agreed that Sydenhams water concerns were to remain Loughborough districts problem. For any of the councillors to suggest otherwise now could be political suicide.
But play with the numbers: divided among the townships 6000 tax bills: $1,600,000 could be raised in 5 years, at the cost of $53.00 each per year. Thats the equivalent of one cup of coffee a week.
If continued at the same rate, a fund could accumulate for the time when Battersea, Verona, Harrowsmith or Inverary needed water systems.
What about the taxpayers that live outside the villages? Theyll not get the benefit of a municipal water system. Why should they pay? It seems to me that the villages still make important contributions to the quality of life out here north of the 401. Even though you may not live in a village, you probably shop there, send your kids to school, go to church, the library, the bank, and the post office. You drive your kids in to Scouts and Cubs, go to the doctor or the dentist or the hairdresser or the vet or the seniors apartments, all usually in one of the villages. Is the opportunity to live near a healthy, thriving village not worth the cost of a cup of coffee a week per household?
