Motion calling on the region to reimburse Cambridge residents for LRT costs goes to council

A push to give money back to Cambridge taxpayers who helped fund the region’s LRT returns to city council. CTV’s Heather Senoran reports.

Councillors are officially bringing a motion to Cambridge council to reimburse residents for the cost of Grand River Transit’s ION Light Rail Transit (LRT).

The Region of Waterloo launched the LRT in Kitchener and Waterloo in June 2019 with the promise that service would eventually extend to Cambridge.

Although there are now plans in motion to extend LRT coverage to some parts of Cambridge, city councillor Helen Shwery is said it’s not fair that Cambridge residents have been paying for the transit system since its inception. On Monday, she will bring forward a motion asking the region for more information on how much Cambridge taxpayers have paid to date. The motion also requests reimbursement for all Cambridge taxpayers and asks the region to stop all future payments.

“We paid $60 million to their building of their ION, but they will not be paying a penny to build [our] ION [extension] because they said they’re getting the money from the provincial government,” Shwery told CTV News ahead of the council meeting.

No decisions were expected on Monday night, but Shwery believed the idea will go up for debate in early February.

“[The Region of Waterloo has] gotten all this benefit from all this economic development. $5 million that they received,” she said. “We never got any financial benefit from that.”

When the issue of who reaps the benefits of LRT routes came up at regional council in September, Doug Spooner, Region of Waterloo’s acting transit commissioner, said, “I struggle with the notion of dividing our region into pieces and talking about who’s benefiting.”

He added, “When the tax uplift happened from LRT Stage One, taking a single-storey lowrise to a tower where we’re obviously generating more taxes, that goes into a general fund for the programs that I deliver.”

Spooner also noted money from that fund goes toward road maintenance and development throughout the region, including the townships that do not have LRT service.

When CTV News reached out to the region on Monday, they directed our reporter to a document that stated: “Transit is a regional service and there is one combined tax rate for conventional and specialized transit services in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.”

But some Cambridge councillors remain steadfast in their convictions.

Earlier this month, Cambridge councillor Adam Cooper also expressed his strong feelings about Cambridge residents contributing to the cost of the LRT.

“We need to not be paying, in the future, for services that we don’t have. Until there are tracks running through Cambridge, we should not be paying,” he said.