{"id":8514,"date":"2025-03-28T15:01:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T18:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=8514"},"modified":"2025-03-30T15:51:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T18:51:06","slug":"molega-lot-owners-push-for-changes-to-queens-private-road-fee-bylaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2025\/03\/28\/molega-lot-owners-push-for-changes-to-queens-private-road-fee-bylaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Molega lot owners push for changes to Queens private road fee bylaw"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Members of the Greater Molega Lake Lot Owners Association want changes to a proposed private road levy bylaw. (Rick Conrad)<\/p><\/div>\n

A property owners group in Queens County\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s proposed bylaw on private road maintenance charges.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bylaw has been in the works since 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than 5,700 properties in Queens County are connected to roads that aren\u2019t maintained by the municipality or the province. Most of these roads are in the areas of Molega, Ponhook and Annis lakes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the new bylaw, the region would collect the fees on annual municipal tax bills, and then remit those to the association.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dwayne Primeau is president of the Molega lot owners group.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOptimistically, 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. \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The group represents 1,233 property owners, covering more than 1,200 hectares or 3,000 acres. It\u2019s the largest recreational development in Atlantic Canada. Many people now live in the area full-time.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

But treasurer Bruce MacInnis told councillors that about 20 per cent of land owners don\u2019t pay their fees.<\/span><\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people we just have difficulty finding because we have to maintain mailing lists and the information\u2019s not always easy to find. So that takes a lot of time as well. And we\u2019re volunteers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The group said a lower percentage would allow it to hire a manager to oversee its work in maintaining the private roads.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Primeau said after the meeting that he\u2019s cautiously optimistic the bylaw will be adopted before the group begins sending out invoices in November.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

“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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Councillors had suspended first reading of the bylaw in January so that they could become more familiar with it. It\u2019s unknown when council will bring it back.<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the audio version of this story below<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/molegaprivateroadbylaw2mar2825.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A property owners group in Queens County\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[2995,2990,2362,2989,2997,993,2994,2992,2996,2993,2991,49,24,2306],"class_list":["post-8514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-annis-lake","tag-bruce-macinnis","tag-cottage-country","tag-dwayne-primeau","tag-greater-molega-lake-lot-owners-association","tag-molega-lake","tag-ponhook-lake","tag-private-road-fees","tag-private-road-levy","tag-private-road-maintenance-fee-bylaw","tag-private-road-maintenance-fees","tag-queens-county","tag-region-of-queens","tag-road-maintenance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8514"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8521,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8514\/revisions\/8521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}