By Doug Draper
Gary Burroughs and his Niagara regional council will soon begin addressing an issue that has often been treated as if it was radioactive by previous councils.
Niagara Regional Chair Gary Burroughs
“We are opening it up and everything is on the table,” Niagara Regional Chair Gary Burroughs told Niagara At Large following a meeting of regional council this January 19. That means everything from sticking with the status quo to making changes to the region’s committee system, to how many individuals should sit on the council and how the regional chair is selected. And yes, the council will also review the ever thorny issue of amalgamating municipalities, right up to an including the idea of one ‘City of Niagara’.
That last option – one City of Niagara that would replace an existing two-tier system that includes 12 local municipal councils – has been an all but taboo subject with regional councils in the past. The odd councillor who would broach the subject of amalgamation sometimes refer to it as “the A word.”
Burroughs, who was sworn in as Niagara’s regional chair a year ago after serving several years as a regional councilor and lord mayor for Niagara-on-the-Lake, vowed to finally carry out a governance review during this four-year term of council.
“This governance review is a council-led initiative” and a “key priority,” said Burroughs during his opening remarks at the January 19 council meeting. “It is, however, a very challenging subject (and) I am confident that this council can have a meaningful debate that is focused and successful.”
The council will begin the review and all of the debating that is sure to go with it at a committee of the whole meeting on February 16.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this topic in the comment boxes below. Please remember that we only post comments by people who share their real first and last names with them.)
Niagara At Large 
They will talk but the big question is “Will they do anything other than talk”
It will be a surprise if they do !!
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What think you?
Should we southern Niagara people just give up now and all move to St.Kitts to be part of the new centralised power? At least we’d be closer to the new ‘St.Kitts Hospital’, eh.
OR
Are you suggesting that we give every municipality just 1 vote in the new City of Niagara, and have only 12 councillors?
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I have been complaining about the waste and incompetence and duplication at the region for almost the 40 years that I have been in business.
The incompetence that I have had to deal with goes right to the top.
Of course it would have been easier for me to just do what many other contractors have done and that is to shut my mouth and just pay these people some cash or build their cottages or docks up in cottage country or perhaps send them on golf trips down south in April.
These are all things that I told a former regional chair in a private meeting almost 20 years ago that were in fact happening, but I was told when the meeting ended that it would be looked into and I would hear back from that person.
My question is ! Will I hear back before I die.
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Niagara has been governed and stumbling over the past many decades due to parochialism of various municipalities fighting everything the region might want to do. Progressive projects put forth or considered by the region have always been fought by local governments, thus making it difficult for Niagara to move to the 20th let alone 21st century. I am in favour of eventual amalgamation as a city of Niagara, but this would be proceeded by an uploading of different services, as practicable, until people will recognize that half a million people here are being governed by 124 politicians at the municipal level, while the city of Toronto with over 3 million are governed by just 44 politicians. But I am afraid parochialism will prevent us once again from getting much further in this discussion.
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Good points Angela. However,
1. We have already uploaded a Lot to the Region – is service better?
Port Colborne received an award for ‘best recycling city in Ontario’ ~1988 … and then Garbage was Regionalised. Port was recyclling about 70% of our garbage, and now the Region is barely at 50%.
Bigger isn’t better.
2. We don’t want fewer politicians -all Full-time and earning $100+k/year as in Toronto- we want fewer, more efficient civil servants giving more value per tax dollar (Mike Harris had it wrong!).
(Read the comment from Richard Berry just above yours.)
Bigger isn’t better.
3. Local politicians can be easily found to discuss problems or proposals. Fewer Regional politicians make it easier for big developers to have influence, without enough input from citizens.
(Read the comment from Richard Berry just above yours.)
Bigger isn’t better.
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I find it hard to believe that most people, no matter where they live in the region, haven’t claimed to live in Niagara. What does someone from Wainfleet, for example, say to people when they travel abroad. I’m from Wainfleet, Ontario. It’s only natural to expect foreigners to have some clue as to where Niagara Falls is.
As far as parochialism is concerned, what are people’s greatest fear? That they’ll lose their identity? Or that if we did have a unified region, all our attentions will go towards the larger centres let the rest of the region go unattended?
If the majority of people in St. Catharines feel we should amalgamate, then we should do it regardless of where the other communities stand. I think over time, maybe even to ensure their not lost in the shuffle, others would join us. Maybe Thorold has no appetite for amalgamating with St. Kitts, but if we amalgamated with the Region, aren’t they more likely to join?
And even if St. Catharines were to amalgamate, I’d still say, I’m from St. Catharines, Niagara, just I’m from Niagara. In St. Catharines, I know who we are.
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There are two separate yet equally important realities when looking at amalgamation in Niagara, political and administrative. First political. Certainly, a reduction in the number of politicians would be achieved. A massive reduction representation would create the necessity of a new political class of elected officials, presumably full time and hopefully professional. Important decisions would have to be made as to the level of representation per capita for a regional population of 440,000. For arguments sake lets use 44 Councilors, each representing 10,000 citizens. Take the total amount of salaries paid to all municipal politicians divided by 44 and voila you have a newly minted regional Councilors salary. There is the matter of head of Council. A preferable choice would be a directly elected Mayor with a salary commensurate with the responsibilities of the position. As far as political boundaries, I would re-draw the map to break up traditional areas/neighbouhoods to mitigate parochialism as much as possible.
Administratively, I foresee losers in amalgamation. It is inconceivable that we would have the same number of public employees given a general acknowledgement that there is duplication in the system. Could economies of scale achieve a 10 or even 20% reduction in staff and the disposal of redundant municipal assets? A substantial bottom line reduction in taxes combined with adequate service levels from elected representatives would be paramount concerns for the electorate.
I believe the biggest obstacles to this are the parochial political interests within the 12 lower tier governments, loss of local identity being the greatest intangible argument against amalgamation. I suspect it’s more a case of those politicians desire to remain a large frog in a small pond.
The other of course are all too powerful public service labour unions. I cannot fathom those entities surrendering jobs willingly,regardless of positive outcomes that are necessary for amalgamation to be successful.
I believe that if those issues aren’t addressed then Niagara will continue to go down the road of pointless exercises and economic irrelevance.
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Good framework for discussion John:
1. POLITICAL:
Why not just ask the Province for a Parliament of Niagara, following the same rules as the Parliament of Ontario? Four years is far too long to have representatives who can’t be recalled; in a Parliament, the government could fall if it loses confidence.
2. ADMINISTRATIVE:
“Take the total amount of salaries paid to all municipal politicians divided by 44 and voila you have a newly minted regional Councilors salary.”
Ah but John, your idea is to SAVE tax money, and Full-Time councillors (or MRP’s) would need to have Staff with Local Offices to help us through the maze of the Niagara Region’s civil service. Full-Time politicians will be Very costly.
Finally:
Do you really think Niagara’s economic doldrums have been caused by our form of Regional government?
Or is it the fact that, for many years, the Province has favoured Toronto, the GTA and other big cities over the rest of Ontario?
Equalising hydro rates (mid-1970’s) to insulate TO and the GTA from expensive Pickering Nuclear rates, drove almost all of Niagara’s heavy industry away – they originally came here for cheap hydro rates from Sir Adam Beck.
Queen’s Park refused to build highways to make it easier for industry/commerce to locate in Niagara South, but continue to expand them in Niagara North which destroys tender fruit land as development follows highways.
Ditto for hospitals, etc….
(To be fair, we have Brock University, 50+% of Niagara College, and a provincial Ministry re-located to … Niagara North.)
Let’s make the big guys bigger.
Let’s get it over with, abandon small-town paradise, and move to the big city … in Niagara North.
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Is it not possible to amalgamate regional services without having regional government or one Niagara?
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Lorne, I can’t conceive of this current myriad of politicians doing anything unless there is something in it for them, hence a more lucrative pay cheque. I do like your idea of a re-call mechanism. I don’t suggest Niagara’s economic doldrums are a result of regional government., but let’s face it our current political establishment has been less than agile a dealing with change and/or innovation. You and I have had the conversation about hydro rate equalization and yes that is a major contributor to Niagara’s down turn.
Ultimately, I would like a conversation about splitting Niagara in to two entities. Badawey had proposed a separation of hospital services so why NOT a political separation as well. The bottom line is the current system is not serving this region particularly well. Living in the south i have a fundamental distrust of the north namely St. Catharines. Nothing personal to the folks who live there but let’s face it after the new hospital fiasco it becomes abundantly clear that there is a certain power base that doesn’t give a rat’s rectum about the south. If I’m going to be deemed a second class citizen within Niagara, i would prefer to have the ability to make greater choices about my communities future.
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Let’s hope this in not just more of the political window-dressing the folks of Niagara have been duped by in previous administrations, and wish for real results in the form of more efficiencies and lower costs, not to mention getting out of businesses/services we can’t compete in?!
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The various areas of Fort Erie, Ridgeway, Crystal Beach, Stevensville, etal. “amalgamated” into One Fort Erie 41 years ago. This amalgamation is not yet complete. The areas are more divided than ever before. If it has taken 41 years to get this far I predict that a true amalgamation of One Niagara may be completed by the NEXT celebration of the War Of 1812.
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Governance at the Region will be a dud. Council will pass all of one new policy: running an “elected” chair. More window-dressing will occur in the form of Council endorsing the concept of “dual-serving”, full-time councillors for St. Catharines and that’s where this topic will end with ANY success.
True reform means less government which means shrinking and/or eliminating either regional or municipal government. Council needs to take a hard look at itself and justify the value of having “Mayors” sit on regional council. Considering these folks were not elected for this position it’s easy to guess who they really serve when matters of supposedly “common good” are discussed/debated. I suggest we could streamline our over-politicianed Niagara by eliminating Mayors from regional council and chopping municipal councils in half where alderpersons represent without any ward affiliation.
Governance must start with the governing, and this decisive act (which will NEVER happen) is a must to get Niagara back in the 21st century given the morass of parochialism which plagues the existing broken model.
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I would prefer small “local” (and responsive) councils and no Regional government – a public services board to operate shared services will suffice.
Big government means big money, big influence, etc…and I don’t have either.
Read what Peter Kormos has to say…I agree with him!
http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3447243
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As long as we reduce the total size of government including the number of politicians and public sector employees it would be progress. The taxpayer is spent, it’s time for ALL municipal governments to look seriously at outsourcing all services where the the private sector has demonstrated competence. Only then does government have a regulatory and supervisory role but that requires a lot less employees. We also must stop defined pension plans where the taxpayers pay 100% of public sector pensions. We in the private sector don’t get it, neither should government. it’s only fair that the pain of unemployment and lower incomes and benefits be shared across both sectors.
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Tom, I am the opposite. I prefer ONE Niagara, though we aren’t going to get there overnight. The reason regional council is not effective is because we have the twelve municipalities bringing their grievances to regional council and nothing gets done in the interests of the whole region. I prefer to live in a more cosmopolitan community than a “small town” environment, where we will get almost zero in provincial and federal resources. I grew up in a small town (up north) and I know how job opportunities, educational opportunities and so forth were very limited there.
Frankly, if I was able to save any money, which I am not, I would prefer to move to Toronto, where at least Torontonians do care about their city and have been fighting to preserve services, as opposed to trying to knock them all down and returning to the 1920’s like we have been here.
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Andrew is right, as there really needs to be a change in governance. He feels the structure of regional council is a problem, e.g. allowing city mayors to sit on regional council. If we were one city of Niagara, there would not be any city mayors to sit on regional council, and we would have much fewer politicians, but the ones we have would be working full time on all of our behalfs.
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If we didn’t have Regional Government the mayors would not be sitting on Regional Council.
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…and we would collectively have less of a voice with 12 little municipalities all vying for the same dollars and services and businesses to locate.
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