The amalgamation of rural municipalities with Lindsay into the City of Kawartha Lakes has been a "gross injustice to rural people" says David Marsh, a councillor in the new city. He is one of the leaders of the movement to de-amalgamate the city.

"We’re close to a tax revolt," he said. A meeting he had planned, expecting 100, turned into an angry protest of 650 people. "We haven’t seen the audited statement (of the city) from 2001," he said. In the wake of the meeting and other protests, local MPP Chris Hodgson has made a commitment to a referendum on de-amalgamation.

Marsh argues that for years rural municipalities have run tight budgets with reserves and kept tax increases down. But after two years of amalgamation taxes are climbing somewhere between 10 per cent and 40 per cent.

"Farmers are paying taxes for street lights and sidewalks," he says. They’ll also have to pick up part of the tab for the Ross memorial Hospital in Lindsay, even though they use other hospitals.

"There’s no light at the end of this tunnel," he says. The city has replaced volunteer fire departments with $70,000 chiefs, and market value assessment is up 40 per cent.

City officials argue savings have been made and some municipalities had allowed their facilities or services to run down. Marsh said the arena in his own riding had been renovated at a cost of $650,000 but that the former township had $1 million in reserve.

Amalgamating rural and urban communities is an experiment in social engineering that doesn’t work, says Dwight Eastman, a dairy farmer and councillor with the new city of Ottawa.

"When you combine urban and rural communities, the rural voice is lost and members begin to lose the ability to run their own communities," he says.

Marsh is less diplomatic. He says "The big city boys are trying to fool the country bumpkins." The new City of Kawartha Lakes has 78,000 people. Marsh was a Reeve of Manvers Township before amalgamation.

Eastman’s Ottawa isn’t faring much better than Kawartha Lakes. Ottawa tried to initiate a subsidized bus service in one rural area that would have raised taxes $100 per dwelling for a five square mile radius of potential passengers. The service was turned down, though elsewhere a rural service is running. Although deer-car collisions occur twice daily and herds of 20 and 30 can be seen off Highway 416 the city seems paralysed by inaction.

Taxes in Ottawa have held the line, but not for long, Eastman says. There are 17,000 employees in the city and many have enjoyed pay hikes after amalgamation occurred. The number of employees is marginally fewer.

The costs are escalating and the rural voice has been drowned out by big spenders whose concept of reality is connected to city sidewalks and paved streets where only police and criminals carry guns. The city’s rural spaces are now for lookin’ and taxin’. If you’re a farmer, making a living is getting tougher. A very realistic fear is that they’ll regulate people out of business.