Collingwood mayor pushes for funding for pivotal projects

Mayors of small communities from across Ontario are in the province's largest city this week, coming face to face with some of their provincial counterparts.

The Rural Ontario Municipalities Association (ROMA) is convening for its annual conference in Toronto. Many politicians from Simcoe County, including Collingwood Mayor Yvonne Hamlin, are among those in attendance.

The mayor of the waterfront community is looking for increased provincial support to make some of her most ambitious projects come to fruition.

Hamlin is currently overseeing what could be a historic revitalization of the town's iconic grain terminals. Now, work is being done to take a memorandum of understanding with the two developers, Dream Unlimited and Streetcar, and turn it into a formal developmental agreement.

"There aren't many grain terminals that have been revitalized in the world, and we have something very special that should this get built, fingers crossed always to that point, this will be something very special, and I think it will be quite a draw to the South Georgian Bay area," Hamlin said to CTV News.

According to Hamlin, the developers will soon seek public consultation on the proposals, with more mandatory public meetings to be held as the project advances.

While in Toronto at the ROMA conference, Hamlin is also looking to shore up support for the town's expanded water treatment plant. Last year, the timeline was extended from 2026 to 2028 when the estimated project cost more than doubled in size.

The plant is not only critical to Collingwood, but it also services neighbouring municipalities.

"So to make this happen, we really need the province to come in as a partner, and I think that what's important for us is we've been able to get some expressions of interest from the Town of Blue Mountains and Clearview and Essa," Hamlin said. "So we're looking to the province to help fund and to also bring us together in the best way to make this happen."

Hamlin says that the expanded water treatment plant is a critical component to the town being able to achieve its target of new housing starts set by the Ford government, which has pledged to build 1.5 million homes by 2031.

"We now in Collingwood have our planning all in place to allow for an expansion of our population but we can't do it without expanding our water treatment plant and next up will be our wastewater treatment plant," Hamlin said. "So these are things where we're trying to make development and growth happen, but we can't do it with the funding that we have or the debt limits we're allowed."