Nothing here is an allegation. Every figure below is quoted from an agenda, minutes, an agreement, a by-law, a document obtained by freedom of information request, an audited financial statement, or an email from the municipalities themselves. Where a number can be read two ways, both readings are shown.
From Carling's own audited statements. Every one of the last nine years ended in a surplus, never a deficit. Seven of those nine years beat the budgeted figure — in 2024, by nearly three times. Carling keeps taking in more than it needs.
2022 restated for the asset retirement obligation standard. 2024 and 2025 actual surpluses exclude the share of the Rec Centre partnership, which the statements report separately.
Budgeted Surplus is the accrual-basis figure disclosed in each year's own audited financial statements (Note 11/12 "Budget" reconciliation) — not the Council-approved cash budget, which is legally required to balance to zero every year.
The common rebuttal is that a surplus is really grant money. In 2025 it was not: taxation was two thirds of all revenue.
Both are correct. They measure different things, so this site names which is which every time.
20.8% is the surplus on Carling's own operations — the honest answer to "how much of my tax money was left over". 29.8% is the provincial FIR basis, and it is the only basis on which all 28 townships can be compared. On either measure Carling is first of 28, against a median of 6.6%.
All figures 2024, the newest year every town has filed with the province. The comparison set is townships of 750 to 2,250 people that do not charge for water or sewer. Whitestone and McKellar are Carling's closest neighbours and qualify on their own.
Carling passes all three of the province's financial health checks in the safest zone. Those checks were built to catch a town that saves too little. Nothing in them flags a town that collects too much.
The usual answer to a large surplus is that a repair bill is coming. Carling has that bill costed, by its own consultants, in the fourth revision of its Asset Management Plan, prepared by TULLOCH Engineering — a ten-year plan for 2024 to 2033, dated August 25, 2025. It is worth reading, because it does not say what the surplus implies it says.
So the money is not being held back for a coming crisis; the plan is explicit that average annual need sits inside what Carling has historically been able to spend. Here is what is happening to the assets in the meantime.
Average road condition is 5.34 out of 10, against the target of 6 or greater the Township set for itself. Thirty-five of the 109 segments rate 5 or below — poor, by the plan’s own scale. Gravel roads average 4.24. Those ratings come from the 2021 Road Needs Study, carried forward. Roads are $36.16 million of the $49 million portfolio — roughly three quarters of everything the Township owns.
Buildings are mostly in good shape, with two exceptions: the Sawdust Bay and Pengally Bay boat ramps, both rated for replacement. On a township of this shape, water access is not an amenity.
Of sixteen vehicles, only two — both 2022 models — are rated "Good." Older fire apparatus and heavy equipment are rated "Poor" or for replacement. Seventy-six of 104 equipment items are flagged for replacement within the decade.
Carling owns exactly one bridge — Dillon Road — and it carries a single lane of travel. The plan rates it Good overall with its seals Poor, schedules joint and barrier work for 2029 on the assumption a grant covers two thirds, and states that full replacement is not needed this decade. It also prices every bridge replacement as a two-lane structure, calling that an improvement to the level of service. So the two-lane crossing is costed in the Township’s own plan and scheduled nowhere in it. Anyone who plows it in February or meets oncoming traffic on it in July can say why that matters.
The plan records a 33 per cent population increase between the 2016 and 2021 censuses — 366 more people — and then concludes the increase is “not considered significant in terms of driving new infrastructure needs,” assuming service levels need not rise at all for ten years. That assumption is doing quiet work: it is what allows a ten-year plan to hold steady while the community using the roads, ramps and hall keeps getting larger.
The strategy council is asked to adopt conserves money by accepting sub-target condition on roads carrying under 100 vehicles a day, letting non-critical equipment lapse out of service, and decommissioning underused facilities rather than replacing them. The question that belongs in public: was any of that ever put to the residents on those roads, or does it exist only inside a planning document?
The financing levers put in front of council include tax increases, new or expanded user fees, fundraising, reserve draws and debt. Grant funding beyond the existing $100,000 a year for roads is described in the plan as "unpredictable." That leaves three honest answers — raise taxes, borrow, or cut service — and every candidate should have to name theirs.
The condition ratings date from 2021 and a 2026 Roads Needs Study is planned to validate the deterioration rates the whole model rests on. Every gap figure above is only as good as those assumptions — which is an argument for reading the plan every year, not for ignoring it.
Read together, the two documents say something simple. The Township is holding $29.1 million, and its own plan needs $1.1 million a year. Meanwhile the roads sit below the standard council set, two ramps are rated for replacement, and the recommended strategy is to let the quiet roads get worse. The one real pressure point, 2032, arrives after the term being elected now — which is exactly why it is being left alone. The money is not the constraint. The decision is.
Salaries over $100,000 are published every year by the province under the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act. These are the 2025 figures, as disclosed. Carling has 1,491 permanent residents in the 2021 census, and a much larger seasonal population, as its neighbours do.
Ontario Sunshine List 2025. McKellar's senior role is titled Clerk/Administrator. Municipalities shown are Carling's regional neighbours and the comparators in its own provincial filings. Larger municipalities in the wider district — Seguin, Muskoka Lakes and Bracebridge among them — pay more in absolute terms; the comparison here is to townships of Carling's own size.
The Treasurer prepares and reports the money. The Clerk keeps the record of what Council decided. The CAO runs the administration that both of them report on. Separating them is the basic control every municipality relies on, because each role is the check on the others. In Carling all three are one position, so there is no independent check on the money, the record, or the administration — and a records request about a decision produces nothing, because the same office decides what is retained. Every peer municipality on this list keeps the Clerk and Treasurer separate.
McKellar is the closest match Carling has — 1,419 residents to Carling's 1,491 in the same provincial filings, and four staff on the list, same as Carling. Its senior administrator is paid $63,865 less. The Town of Parry Sound, more than four times Carling's size with 17 staff on the list, also pays less than Carling does.
In the 2026 budget, general government runs about $375 per household — more than waste management, parks, building and by-law enforcement combined. With four staff on the disclosure list, a line-by-line breakdown is a reasonable thing to ask for.
This is why so many questions here end in "no record found". It is not an accusation of hiding anything. It is the Township's own policy, described by its own CAO in writing.
Township emails are treated as transient documents under its own records retention by-law, so there is nothing to produce in answer to a records request about how a decision was reached.
Board and committee information reaches Council through spoken updates during the meeting. A verbal update leaves no document behind, and the recording of it is deleted after 30 days.
Asked whether Council knew of the September 2022 cost report before the March 2025 guarantee vote, the CAO's answer is that members updated Council verbally, and that this is why the project moved sites. No minute, report or vote records any of it.
"Our Emails etc are consider transient documents are not retained per the Townships record retention bylaw and thus would not have anything to provide."
Not an allegation. It is Carling's own Procedure By-law 2019-48, passed December 10, 2019, read together with the Township's practice of deleting meeting recordings after thirty days.
Section 13.19 is titled "Dissenting Votes Not Recorded": the Clerk shall not note dissenting votes in the minutes unless a member of Council has requested a recorded vote. No request, no record of who objected.
Sections 13.14 and 13.16: a recorded vote happens only when a member calls for one, and only then are the names of those in support and those opposed entered in the minutes. Otherwise the entry reads "Carried" and nothing else.
Section 15.1 requires minutes "without note or comment", and section 4.7 bars anyone from recording a meeting without the permission of the Clerk and the Mayor. The Township's own recordings come down after thirty days.
Section 13.8 requires every member present to vote, and 13.9, "Abstained Vote Counts Against", deems a member who declines or abstains, absent a declared pecuniary interest, to have voted against the motion. Residents still cannot see it happen.
"The Clerk shall not note dissenting votes in the Minutes unless a request has been made by a member of Council for a recorded vote."
Amend the Procedure By-law so every vote on a by-law is a recorded vote, and keep the meeting recordings instead of deleting them. Both are within Council's own power, cost nothing, and need no one's permission but Council's.
From 2019 to late 2023 the project was designed, approved and ICIP funded to be built at 36 Smith Crescent. No agenda, minute or Board record found names who proposed moving it, when, or records a vote. Where is the public record?
Canada and Ontario funded on the $32 million budget and reuse of the existing building. By September 2022 the Board's own report to the ministry priced it at $43,186,000, with construction 2% complete. The audited statements show $29.4M spent by December 31, 2025 and $10.7M still owed under signed contracts, against a $39.5M budget. Eight months into 2026, the newest financial report the Board has made public covers March 31, 2026 — and it was not tabled until July 8. Nothing has been published for April through July.
The 2021 agreement gave the Board no authority to borrow. A February 2024 amendment created the $13.5M facility. Five of six municipalities signed it; McKellar did not.
The bank's covenant requires audited statements within 180 days of year-end — June 29, 2026. The Centre's 2025 statements carry a July 8 auditor's date but did not reach the Board or the Town of Parry Sound until August 17, seven weeks past the deadline. Every partner must consolidate the Centre into its own books, so no municipality meets its filing deadlines, to its ratepayers or the province.
Full detail on the qualified audit opinions, the line-of-credit discrepancy and the fundraising committee's resignation is in the research file, available on request.
Where a Township employee is referred to, it is by title only, and only where the document itself is the source. The full research file, with the exact quoted passage behind every claim, is available on request.