Bluewater will be moving forward with the expansion of the Bayfield Waste Water Treatment Facility thanks to grant funding received from the Ontario Housing Enabling Water Systems Fund. The expected costs of $12M will be fund by $8.5M from the Ontario government grant with the balance coming from development charges and municipal reserves. The project is expected to begin early in 2025 and will be completed by March 2027.

Once the expansion is completed the target for development in Bayfield is 530 new homes. There are still approximately 40-50 lots within Bayfield that can be built upon leaving the balance or 480 to 490 to be subdivisions south of Bayfield proper including Lidderdale, Bunyan, Maxobel areas.

The short term rental bylaw is expected to be reviewed by council at the end of November. One of the issues that will be looked at is the 15% limit per street for STRs. This is being reviewed by Legal to determine if it is legal to have such as restriction.

We will continue to monitor this and work to ensure that the STR Bylaw provides the controls that are necessary.

This continues to be a major issue that has developed for a number of our facilities that are owned by the municipality but operated by local groups. This includes the Lions Building, the Archives Building and the Bayfield Townhall as well as other halls throughout Bluewater. Today and in the proposed new municipal lease agreements for such facilities, the Municipality is stating that the operating groups must not only cover all operating costs but also pay for all capital maintenance costs.

The capital maintenance costs on these older buildings is much more that the local groups can afford and it is raising serious concerns regarding the ongoing operation of the buildings. A Working Committee to investigate this further has been setup and has started meeting individually with each of the affected operating groups to review and get some suggestions on how this is handled. The Working Committee consists of Councilor Bill Whetstone, Deputy Mayor John Becker and Councilor Winona Bailey from Zurich.

The Municipality of Bluewater is seeking general input on where to focus efforts for the 2025 budget. For the first time, residents are able to provide their opinions directly via a survey. The survey can be found here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KBBGW27

The survey closes at 3:00 pm on Friday, November 8th. The results will be included in the Council information package at the first budget meeting on November 25th. The survey results will most likely not inform the first draft of the budget since Council will receive the budget and the survey results at the same session. However Council will be able to consider the survey results as they proceed with their process.

One of the survey questions asks what you think should be purchased if the Municipality were to win $250,000 in a lottery. In fact, the Municipality does receive more than double that amount every year in wind turbine company vibrancy funds. These funds are discretionary and a small amount is used to fund vibrancy grants however a large portion of the funds go into the general operating budget. Perhaps some of these funds should be redirected to address the issue of supporting the capital costs of municipal owned buildings and operated by local service groups. If you agree, we encourage you to add this suggestion to the question of winning a $250,000 lottery.

We encourage you to consider other enhancements that would benefit Bayfield and let the Municipality know your ideas by completing the survey.

We would like to thank all of our members for their ongoing support. If you have not paid your 2024 membership fees ($20.00) please eTransfer the money to bayfieldratepayers@gmail.com

If you are not already a BRA member, we encourage you to join. Please see our website at www.bayfieldratepayers.ca and become part of supporting how your tax dollars are spent.

We look forward to representing your interests on issues impacting Bayfield.