Central Manitoulin meets challenges says mayor

There are several races for mayor in quite a few communities in Algoma Manitoulin and Moose FM will look at some of those campaigns.  In Central Manitoulin incumbent Gerry Strong is seeking re-election after defeating the former mayor, Richard Stephens in 2010.  One issue for Strong is still being able to deliver services to residents at a time when the province keeps cutting transfer payments.  He says it’s a tough job because you can only go to taxpayers so many times.  Strong says a big hit is policing costs rising by $100,000 and they are expected to go up even more.  Strong says another big problem his community faces as well as other rural communities is a provincial change to the Official Plan.  Strong says the change involves no developments on right-of-ways something he says is bad news for Central Manitoulin because that’s how it develops its shoreline property.  Strong says Central Manitoulin council will keep fighting the province on this, because it’s a policy that doesn’t work in the north.  On the plus side the community has seen a big increase in its tax base assessment with several new small businesses and some seniors housing.  Also it didn’t lose Home Hardware to Elliot Lake a while back when the business was looking to leave Providence Bay and ended up relocating to Mindemoya.