Home

Melancthon Citizens Coalition
Statement to the Melancthon Township Council

Following a discussion about the goals of, and strategies available to, the Melancthon Citizens Coalition, the membership unanimously passed a resolution to rely primarily on participation in electoral politics at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, as necessary, in order to promote the Coalition’s objectives.

The decision was taken after a review of the successes and failures of other citizens groups which have addressed contentious issues similar to those facing the citizens of Melancthon Township. With few exceptions, groups that depend on public education campaigns, petitioning elected officials (no matter how well supported by research), government appeal and stakeholder procedures, legal action, and the deliberations of the Ontario Municipal Board, and other government tribunals and commissions not only fail to achieve their goals, but also often incur crippling costs and liabilities. Elected officials have made the decision that the province’s mechanisms for dealing with contentious development issues will be used to protect large commercial interests and politicians, rather than ordinary citizens.

Whether taken at the municipal, provincial, or federal levels, the public policy decisions that affect the lives of Melancthon’s citizens are political and are made — directly or indirectly — by elected officials. The only place today that a citizens group can, without assuming prohibitive costs and risks, effectively support good and oppose bad public policy decisions — and the politicians who make them — is in elections.

To further its political strategy, the Melancthon Citizens Coalition is reaching out to make common cause with other citizens and public interest groups which face similar problems. and are having difficulty making progress in Dufferin County and other parts of the province.

The Coalition will be an active participant in resolving issues that effect human health and safety, the environment, property values, and the quality of life in Melancthon Township. The Coalition looks forward to supporting growth and development that enhances these values, and will aggressively oppose activities that diminish them.

The Coalition believes that public policies that destroy the quality of life in one community to enhance it in another are not only bad public policy and poor governance, but also ethically wrong. Such policies, which are all decided by elected officials, are based on the immoral idea of forcibly and unfairly taking from economically disadvantaged and vote poor areas and giving to those that are economically privileged and vote rich.

Two examples of this policy that adversely affect Melancthon citizens are the spreading of bio-solids and aggregate development. Elected officials expect Melancthon citizens to suffer Toronto’s poorly-treated and dangerous sewer waste being spread on Melancthon’s farm fields, and endure decades of strip-mining for gravel so that the Greater Toronto Area can build its houses, office towers, and highways. These two degradations of Melancthon may be good for the GTA, but neither of them — as they are currently conducted — will improve life for the ordinary citizen in Melancthon Township. They can only cause harm to human health, public safety, the environment, property values, quality of life, and Melancthon’s hopes for the future.

The Melancthon Citizens Coalition is looking forward to working with Council and helping the Reeve and Councillors make, and vigorously defend, sound public policy decisions that will enhance, not diminish, the quality of life in Melancthon Township.

Council is currently facing two key issues that deeply concern the Coalition: a potential challenge to the bio-solids bylaw and a proposal for a new aggregate operation. The Coalition hopes to work with Council to insure that Melancthon’s bio-solids bylaw is not overturned, and support Council in its efforts to resist aggregate development that will impoverish Melancthon, and destroy the current and future attractiveness of Melancthon to present and new residents and responsible businesses.