Members of the Greater Molega Lake Lot Owners Association want changes to a proposed private road levy bylaw. (Rick Conrad)

A property owners group in Queens County’s growing cottage country hopes regional council can pass a new bylaw by the fall that would make it easier to collect fees to maintain private roads.

Representatives from the Greater Molega Lake Lot Owners Association appealed to councillors at their regular meeting on Tuesday to make a few changes to the region’s proposed bylaw on private road maintenance charges.

The bylaw has been in the works since 2019.

More than 5,700 properties in Queens County are connected to roads that aren’t maintained by the municipality or the province. Most of these roads are in the areas of Molega, Ponhook and Annis lakes.

The association invoices property owners an annual fee for that maintenance, using manually generated lists. It charges property owners annual fees of $408.25 for developed land and $149.50 for vacant land. Those amounts include HST.

Under the new bylaw, the region would collect the fees on annual municipal tax bills, and then remit those to the association.

Dwayne Primeau is president of the Molega lot owners group.

“Optimistically, when this bylaw has passed and hopefully when we adopt it, what will happen is the region will issue a tax invoice that includes a road maintenance levy. And that would essentially be the same fee that is collected at one time and then remitted from the Region of Queens to the association to support us in delivering the service to the citizens. ”

The group represents 1,233 property owners, covering more than 1,200 hectares or 3,000 acres. It’s the largest recreational development in Atlantic Canada. Many people now live in the area full-time.

The association is responsible for maintaining 52 kilometres of roadway, including 10 km of provincially owned K class roads, 13 boat launches and three bridges.

But treasurer Bruce MacInnis told councillors that about 20 per cent of land owners don’t pay their fees.

“And it is quite an expensive process because we’re duplicating effectively what they do here (at the region),” he said in an interview after the meeting.

“There’s a lot of people we just have difficulty finding because we have to maintain mailing lists and the information’s not always easy to find. So that takes a lot of time as well. And we’re volunteers.”

As part of the proposed bylaw, the region would keep about five per cent of the fees they collect to pay for administrative costs. The association estimates that would cut about $15,000 from what it gets from the levy. It wants that lowered to two to three per cent.

The group said a lower percentage would allow it to hire a manager to oversee its work in maintaining the private roads.

The bylaw would also require agreements with lot owners associations to be renewed every year. The group wants that changed to every five years, with renewal based on meeting certain criteria.

Primeau said after the meeting that he’s cautiously optimistic the bylaw will be adopted before the group begins sending out invoices in November.

“The message we’re trying to relate today is that our members and our board are are in support of and in need of this assistance to continue to maintain and manage the infrastructure, supporting this growing part of the region.

“We would really love to see this be in place and ready for us to adopt prior to November of 2025, which is when we typically would follow our manual process to invoice for the coming year’s fees.”

Councillors had suspended first reading of the bylaw in January so that they could become more familiar with it. It’s unknown when council will bring it back.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

Listen to the audio version of this story below

Garbage piled up at one of the ‘greybox’ sites in Queens County. (Submitted)

Region of Queens officials plan to take action to curb the ongoing garbage problem in the county’s increasingly popular cottage country.

Councillors will vote on several recommendations at their June 25 meeting that they hope will mitigate chronic trash pileups and overflows at so-called “greybox” sites in areas such as Labelle and Molega.

There are about 40 greybox sites on or near private roads throughout the municipality. They consume half of the region’s garbage collection budget. 

The private roads do not have the regular garbage pickup service of most property owners who live on public roads. So the municipality has dropoff sites throughout the region where residents can deposit their waste, recyclables and compostables.

The region picks up the garbage once a week in spring, fall and winter and either two or three times a week in summer months.

District 6 Coun. David Brown has a lot of recreational or cottage properties in his area. In January, he asked the region’s staff to come up with possible solutions to the refuse abuse.

Brown said that especially in the busier summer months, people regularly just toss their trash on the ground around the greyboxes, instead of putting it inside. They’ll also leave big household items like furniture at the sites, even though the municipal landfill is nearby.

Even non-residents regularly leave their garbage, compounding the problem. Some bring their trash in on Fridays and dump them at the sites when they visit their properties on the weekends.

“The bylaw says that those grey bins are for the residents of private roads only for bagged garbage, created on site,” Brown said. “And people who are spending the weekend and dumping everything on Sunday night as they leave, a lot of that stuff can be taken to the landfill.” 

Region of Queens officials want to crack down on how people on private roads use greyboxes for their garbage. (Rick Conrad)

CAO Cody Joudry said he and other staff members have had many discussions about why the problem persists and how to fix it.

“At some of our worst sites, it starts to reach a threshold … at which it seems to overflow,” Joudry said. “And once one person does something, then all of a sudden everyone does it, sort of disrespect the whole thing.”

Joudry said staff suggest trying a few different things to see what works. He made five recommendations:

• install cameras to record when and how often the sites begin to overflow
• capture license plates of offenders and send notices to vehicle owners warning that further offences will result in fines
• add more greyboxes to see if it reduces the amount or frequency of overflows
• look for other locations where the boxes are less visible to non-residents
• increase the collection frequency at some locations from Dec. 1 to March 31.

Joudry said the region tried to install surveillance cameras at some sites years ago, but people stole them. He said staff have ideas about how to limit or prevent that from happening again.

Joudry said staff would report to council in mid-winter 2025 on the effectiveness of their efforts.

District 5 Coun. Jack Fancy said the areas have unreliable internet and cell service, so real-time surveillance may be difficult.

He said he’d also like to see an area for people to leave large items so they don’t get in the way of the greyboxes. He suggested a semi-annual “dump day” for people to drop large items, and to hold a roadside giveaway once a year.

“If we don’t get that big stuff moved out from in front of the bins, people are … going to throw their garbage down there and then somebody else throws the garbage there and then you’ve got the bins that aren’t even full, you can’t get at them becasue of the big items in front of them,” Fancy said.

Brown said that he hopes the situation will improve with some education and enforcement. 

“We as a region allow people to take four loads to the landfill every month without charge. … So if somebody has taken the effort to load a chesterfield on the back of a truck and drive it out to the grey bin and throw it on the ground in front of the bins, it’s an extra 15 minutes to go to the landfill and dispose of it properly.  … We need education and a little bit of enforcement and I think the problem will go away on its own.

“And I really applaud staff for coming through and trying an approach because for the past 10 years we have suffered from analysis paralysis. … This starts us on the approach to getting something done. And I think as word gets around that there’s some enforcment happening, people will not want to pay that $682.50 fine.”

The municipality says the extra measures could cost up to $40,000, with the majority of that going to increased weekly garbage collection in winter.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com