Ditch Infilling

A costly but fair resolution
From the Guardian
Summerside , Charlottetown
It’s been a divisive issue for the City of Summerside, but council’s recent decision to pay out rebates to residents who had helped to pay for their own ditch infilling was the right one. It’ll be costly, but fairness dictates that it’s an expense the city has to absorb.
Council has been grappling for months with the question of paying back the portion of the costs residents in outlying areas of the community have paid for ditch infilling. That issue arose after councillors voted a year ago to stop collecting the co-pay in response to residents’ protest over the issue.
For years, Summerside charged a 10 per cent co-pay to provide ditch infilling, and last year a group of residents in the city who were scheduled for the work challenged this policy. They insisted that their tax dollars should cover that cost, and pointed to Charlottetown and other communities where that happens to be the case.
Councillors discussed the issue, and after a split vote requiring Mayor Basil Stewart to cast the deciding vote, council dropped the co-pay policy.
That, of course, raised the question of how to deal with those residents over the years who had paid, and last week that created an equally heated and divisive debate that ended up requiring the mayor to again cast the deciding vote in favour of paying back residents who had paid for ditch infilling. Specifically the city will pay back $71,234 a year for four years in rebates to property owners in the outlying areas.
This is a significant financial commitment for the city, but it’s unavoidable. The previous policy was simply unfair. Most residents expect certain services to be a given. Few would expect, for instance, to pay for sidewalk work or road repair in front of their properties. Why would they expect to cough up for ditch infilling?
Council did the right thing last year in acknowledging the inherent unfairness of the policy, and discontinuing it. But that did not address those who previously had been subjected to the policy. To ignore them would not have been acceptable. As costly as the rebates to the city will be over the next four years, the city is acting responsibly.