Central Huron's mayor says the heritage designations for the town hall in Clinton and the library are preventing the municipality from making the best use of the two buildings.
"We recently replaced the roof and the cost of that is double what it would have been if we had used another material that would have looked identical from the street," said Ginn. "But we had to use actual slate and the cost of tradesmen and the cost of the material just doubled the price."
Clinton's Town Hall received a Heritage Designation under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1978.
"When they were designated apparently there were some dollars that came to support that," explained Ginn. "Those dollars aren't available anymore and we're not sure whether there'll be push back or not. We just know that it cost taxpayers an extra $350,000 that, in our opinion, didn't need to be spent."
But it's not just infrastructure costs that are higher because of following the rules.
"The Heritage Act makes for instance our windows that we're replacing, they've got to be made out of wood and we have no insulation value in those windows," said Ginn.
Ginn says he's not sure at this time if their request to get rid of the Heritage designation is going to be granted or not and it is not their intention to destroy the buildings in any way.
