Choice Of A New Niagara Regional Chairman Should Not Be Taken Lightly

By Doug Draper

This October’s municipal elections may already be fading from memory but the campaigning hasn’t stopped at the region.
                                                
A few weeks from this Thursday, a newly inaugurated regional council made up of 19 directly elected councillors and the mayors of Niagara’s 12 local municipalities will be choosing a new chairman to replace the retiring Peter Partington.

To some out there, this business of choosing a chairman or “chair” (when the job went a decade ago to Debbie Zimmerman, who was the only woman to hold it to date) may seem like little more than a ritual. “Isn’t the regional chairman just a figurehead,” one of my neighbours asked me recently
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Having watched five of them in action now, starting 40 years ago with Niagara regional government’s very first chairman, John Campbell, and continuing with Wilbert Dick, Brian Merritt, Zimmerman and Peterson, my answer to that question is a resounding ‘No’! 

Whoever gets this job will be setting an overall tone and framing policy for the next four years for a regional government that is responsible for spending five out of every ten dollars you shell out each year in property taxes.
 
The regional government is also responsible for the delivery of some of the most essential services there are, including policing, the collection, recycling and disposal of household wastes, water and wastewater treatment, the maintenance of hundreds of miles of regional roads, public health matters that range from the inspection of food vendors to the delivery of flu shots, and affordable homes for our seniors and other residents on fixed or low incomes. So who gets the regional chair’s job – one that pays roughly $110,000 annually and is the only full-time elected position at the regional government level – should not be taken lightly.

Indeed, it should be taken seriously.

Whoever gets this job next faces a Niagara that is going through a period of tremendous challenges and transition. It is a region, as I’ve stressed before in this space, has an amazing amount of potential given its many diverse resources and geography, including its agriculture, its link to some of the greatest supplies of fresh waters in the world, it natural and human history, and its, and its strategic place at major boarder crossings between Canada and the United States.

So it is critical that the man or woman that replaces Partington as the top person on Niagara’s municipal government foodchain has the vision to drive this region into a future that is healthier from the health care and environmental point of view, more sustainable from the view of planning and policing our communities, and governing our region in a way that makes economic sense, and works hard to draw new and innovative businesses that create decent-paying jobs for those who have lost decent-paying jobs and our young people who are too often leaving the region for a lack of job opportunities.

There are, of course, a number of individuals who may be in the running for the chief job at the region. Some of them include Brian Baty, a two-term regional councillor from Pelham who also sits on the Niagara Escarpment Commission and Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority; Gary Burroughs, outgoing lord mayor of Niagara-on-the-Lake and ingoing regional councillor for that municipality who also served, more than a decade ago, as chair of the Niagara Parks Commission; Bart Maves, a former MPP for the Ontario Conservative government under the premierships of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves; Henry D’Angela, the outgoing mayor for Thorold and in-going regional councillor for that same municipality, and the list probably goes on. It may even include Debbie Zimmerman, who has served in this position before.

What happens with these elections for regional chairman is that members of the newly elected regional council continue voting for a field of many until it is narrowed to one individual that receives at least 16 votes.

You may be wondering, at this point, what you can do?
 
I’d urge you to call your newly elected mayors and regional councillors and ask them to support a candidate that will build on regional transit, on protecting and preserving what areas left of our human and natural heritage, and on building a more sustainable, job-building economy for our future. Don’t just sit back and wait for these new councillors to pick a new chairman. Call them! Get involved in the process!

Meanwhile, let’s not forget Peter Partington, whose public service begins with his election as a provincial Conservative MPP in St. Catharines in 1985 and continued through his seven years as Niagara’s regional chairman.

I’ve had my ups and downs with Partington, but when you look at the balance sheet, he has been one decent guy who has actually given a rip about expanding transit services and providing more public access to our lakefronts. As he says goodbye, give him a good deal of credit for that.

(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region and, by all means, share your views below.)