Timmins council considers changing ward boundaries

Timmins city council held its final meeting of 2024 this week and part of the discussion included potential changes to the number of councillors voters elect.

With the current system, residents vote for one councillor each in Ward 1, 2, 3 and 4, and four councillors in Ward 5 due to its high population.

Timmins city council meeting. (Lydia Chubak/CTV Northern Ontario)

Administration presented three options to council.

One of them is a 2-4-2 system which would force a decision about what would happen to Schumacher’s ward.

The other two options are to create an at large system or keep the status quo.

Coun. Steve Black is in favour of changing the city's ward boundary system.

He said he thinks it would be fairer if residents could vote for more than one elected official regardless of which ward they live in.

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"There's two that stand out in not having an equilibrium in voting and Timmins is one of them," said Black.

"If you look at Sudbury, there's 12 wards, 12 councillors. That means everyone elects one ward. Everyone has the same say."

But not everyone around the council table agrees.

"You want to ask people in Ward 3, what do you want to do? You want to go to Ward 5, or do you want to go to Ward 2? No, we want to be Ward 3," said Counc.Bill Gvozdanovic.

"I will not support anything else but what we presently have," said Coun. John Curley.

"I don't see a lot of benefit to doing this. I see a lot of negative fallout," said Coun. Lorne Feldman.

The matter has been deferred to a future meeting.

Animal control

At the meeting, council decided to take back management of animal control services.

"We have been experiencing a number of issues with the animal control contract," said city clerk Steph Palmateer.

"It has become quite burdensome to maintain and monitor, so we're recommending that it be brought in-house. The there will be no budgeted impact to the City of Timmins for this cost. The funds paid out in a contract will be utilized to carry out the service internally."

Council also increased the Municipal Accommodation Tax from four to six per cent.

And, for organizations that want to host an event at the 'Hollinger Park’s Festival and Event’s Centre,' there is now a rental fee of about $2,000.