Blake Ellis/The Independent

St. Clair Township council candidates were answering questions about future of the Mooretown campground at the first All-Candidates debate.

The Sombra Township Optimist Club held the event in Port Lambton on Sept. 16, even though the two incumbents in the southern ward of St. Clair have already been acclaimed.

Mayoralty candidates Jeff Agar and Bruce Gibson as well as Ward 1 candidates incumbents Pat Brown, Holly Foster, Cathy Langis and former councillor Tracy Kingston and newcomer Alex Machan were on hand for the debate.

Council representatives answered most of the questions about the campground. Township administrators have recommended its closure a number of times since 2023. Officials say the hydro and water services need to be upgraded.

This summer the pool was out of commission first for repairs and then again when another leak was found.

While administrators said the campground was too costly to maintain, 2025 was the first year it lost money – about $25,000.

In April, council gave the campers another year’s reprieve, saying the facility would remain open until 2027 and would be part of a feasibility study of all the township’s campgrounds. The study is not expected to be completed until December.

“This has been a really tough one for everybody,” said Langis about the question on the future of Mooretown campground.

Langis said council also needs to look at how many residents use the campgrounds compared to those from outside
the township. “I believe it is only 23 in the three of them and only nine in Mooretown,” said Langis of the number of St. Clair Township residents who use the campgrounds.

Then, she says, the township needs to look at whether the municipality should keep them. If they are kept, then council needs to find the money to keep them up, pointing to Mooretown saying it is especially in bad shape.

“We also know that 1,300 people signed a petition saying they wanted it kept open, but there is no cheques with that,”
said Langis. “They are just signing.”

Incumbent Pat Brown said he was never in favour of closing Mooretown Campground, saying the condition of the campground needs to be looked at and upgraded.

Brown says the $112,000 for the study “could have gone a long way to start doing upgrades right in Mooretown.”

In the future, Brown adds, council is going to face the same issues at Branton Cundick Park and Campground and Cathcart Park and Campground, as it is at Mooretown. He suggested all of this can be done in phases.

Incumbent Holly Foster agreed.

“Nobody said sell it.”

Cathcart, she says, is constantly blowing waterlines. “They are having more problems there than in Mooretown.” Foster believes all the campground will need new infrastructure but believes St. Clair Township can’t afford right now. She says the town should saving for the work.

“I want to make the hard decisions,” said Foster. “I want to say we’re putting that money aside. We are not going to touch it.”

Meantime, incumbent mayoral candidate Jeff Agar said the campgrounds are not a big profit business for the municipality. Cathcart makes the most, but they are all surviving until the municipality can invest $1 million for infrastructure. He didn’t equivocally say whether the campground should remain open.

Deputy Mayor-Elect Steve Arnold was in the crowd listening. He says the Mooretown campground has always been
municipally owned. Cathcart and Brandon-Cundick were downloaded from the St. Clair Parkway Commission when it
was dissolve in 2006.

Arnold said under that agreement with the provincial government, St. Clair Township could not sell the two campgrounds it received for 20 years without incurring a penalty.

The council to be elected Oct. 26 will be first that will be able to sell one of those campgrounds without being subject to a penalty.

Arnold, who was St. Clair’s long-time mayor until the 2022 election, insisted there was maintenance done to all of the campgrounds.

“It was not something that was just ignored over the course of time,” said Arnold adding about 20 years ago, it was identified that electrical upgrades had to be done at Mooretown to keep it up to date.

“We always made money,” said Arnold. But, he said, when council would attempt to raise its rates at the campgrounds, there would be opposition from the public and the rate hike would never pass.

He said the campground rates in St. Clair Township are a third of what they are at the campground in Mitchell’s Bay.

The most expensive sites in Mooretown are $3,000 per year while the waterfront sites at Mitchell’s Bay are $5,349 per
season.

If the township has a campground, it has to fund itself, said Arnold.

Candidates also faced question about making Branton-Cundick’s riverfront park more accessible. Kingston, who served on the accessibility committee says it has been a struggle to make public buildings and parks accessible.

Langis, who has been working on the accessiblity the last term of council, added she would support making the park accessible “as soon as we get a million trillion dollars” saying grant money is needed to do the work.