Minden Hills

It needs to be funded.

It needs to be, like, something that we can say, "Hey, we're gonna start advertising." Meaford does it, Minden Hills does it.

You know, right now, the recruitment program is, "Hey, you're a person.

Do you w- have you ever thought of being on the fire department?" [laughs]

Durham Region, Oshawa, Scugog, Brock and Chatham-Kent have completely paused accepting tires at their waste facilities.

And in Minden Hills, they're limiting the number of tires people can drop off at the landfill.

Chelsea Kosh has been the manager of waste facilities in Minden Hills for the past three years.

She sat down with Canoe FM to explain how the delays in collection have impacted the landfill there and why the municipality has been forced to enact a tire limit for residents.

So like we work with producer responsibly organizations and they help the producers manage their materials through like the collection and the processing and the hauling.

I would say close to two years.

We did get a pickup last November, but they only picked up, I would say about 25% of the tires that we have at the site.

So we haven't actually been able to get them cleared out entirely in the whole time that I've been here with Minden Hills in the three years.

And it is very frustrating for me as a guy that's lived in transit most of my professional career to see how the can's been kicked down the road here.

I mean, as recently as the spring this year, right? We were talking about a pilot between Halliburton and Minden Hills.

Everybody was expected to contribute, but it wasn't certainly going to benefit all the different municipalities within the county.

You know, again, some people would say, well, Mike, that flies in the face of what you're talking about.

This is County Close-Up, news from Halliburton County, with Elizabeth Oakley.

In the last six months, a total of four firefighters have resigned from their volunteer firefighting roles with the Minden Hills Fire Department.

The reason? All say the work environment there has become increasingly toxic, and despite them repeatedly raising concerns with Minden Hills staff and council, there has been no change.

Recently, Canoe FM obtained documents containing allegations from former firefighters about workplace conduct, including alleged insults, inappropriate behavior, racial comments, favoritism, and concerns about leadership.

Both told Canoe FM they believe conditions have deteriorated over the past year.

And so I brought it up to him asking, so there's a couple of guys that are a little more experienced, like it'd be nice to get something to them, not just like the basics, because we do have some new people that have to learn them.

completely understandable and like yearly we have to go over a certain set of things but can we also like try and keep them moving forward and then they can also get back i brought that up with deputy chief and that was actually one of the reasons that i was fired

the independent investigator minden hills hired andre labrie runs his own firm in kingston specializing in human resources and workplace harassment investigations His findings confirmed the firefighters' allegations, but recommended Kruger remain in his role as fire chief.

There's this constant, um, uh, rolling up of, of organizations and concentration, and every time that happens, citizens lose control and interaction with their elected officials and with civil servants, and become more and more disenfranchised.

And sitting on the ground, o- one has to wonder, well, where does it end? So we can, we can all be good soldiers and we can say, "You know what? We're gonna give up our four municipalities," which a lot of people find give them identity, and we can argue about that, whether, you know, I'm a, a, a Dysart and Owl person, whether that actually has any meaning, um, versus a Minden person, um, or Algonquin Highlands or Highlands East.

We can, we can argue about that.

Uh, but we- if we take this step, um, will that be it? Will we have the support? Will somebody say, "Hey, good for you.

The councils would still exist.

However, there is a mo- there is kind of a 3A version where you have the four separate municipalities plus the upper tier in a single administration, and I think that's gonna start being part of the modeling coming out.

Um, and then the last one being is, is an even, is a hybrid of that, which is a two mis- two lower-tier system where you have two municipalities, which I believe they identified just from a logistical standpoint was the, uh, amalgamation of Algonquin Highlands and Minden Hills, and the amalgamation of Dysart and, uh, Highlands East.

So you'd have two lower tiers and the upper tier, again, with the transfer of powers from, of some of the powers from the lower tier to the upper tier.