Fewer councillors: Milton adjusts council

NRU
June 29, 2016
By Leah Wong

As part of a regional governance review underway in Halton Region, Town of Milton council voted Monday in favour of reducing the size of its council in time for the 2018 municipal election.

Last year Halton Region council voted to address representation inequities due to population growth by giving Milton two additional seats and Oakville one more seat in advance of the next municipal election.

Burlington and Halton Hills representation would remain the same with seven and three seats respectively. Th e four local councils are expected to vote on the composition of regional council aft er the September 7 public meeting.

To accommodate the additional councillors Milton must restructure its ward boundaries. Getting a head start on the debate Milton has decided to reduce the size of its own council. Presently, with eight wards, Milton council comprises 11 members: a mayor, two regional and eight town councillors.

A report from consultants Watson and Associates and Dr. Robert Williams proposed two options. One was a ninemember council comprising the mayor, four regional and four town councillors.

The other was for a 13-member council comprising the mayor, four regional and eight town councillors.
Monday, in a 6-5 vote, council decided in favour of a nine-member council with four wards.

Ward 8 councillor Zeeshan Hamid told council that given how much Milton is going to grow in the coming years it will need to review its boundaries after every couple of elections. He suggested to accommodate growth in the future it may be necessary to add councillors, thus reducing it now will prevent council from getting too large later.

“Fewer politicians is always a good idea,” said Hamid. “We can always take some of the extra money [from reducing the size of council] and put it towards more staff support.”

Councillors in favour of the nine-member structure suggested that members voting for more councillors were doing so to improve their chances of re-election.

“Politicians always seem to put their own personal self-interest ahead of anything else...There’s a sense that they do what is best for them rather than what is best for the people they represent,” Ward 4 councillor Rick Malboeuf told council. By reducing the size of council he said they could “show residents that not all politicians are the same.”

Councillors against a reduction in the size of council said that fewer councillors would diminish fair representation in the town by increasing the size of wards and thus councillors’ workloads. Also, Milton’s population is ethnically diverse, and with fewer wards there are less opportunities for new candidates to get elected.

“Some voices will be lost or subsumed in larger wards. It will be harder to hear [a range] of local voices,” Ward 7 Rick DiLorenzo told council. He added that the consultants’ report notes that local representation is weakened when there are fewer councillors.

Ward 3 councillor Cindy Lunau suggested that fewer wards would benefi t the current councillors and that while there would be less members on council they would likely be the same familiar faces.

Town councillors Mike Boughton (Ward 2), Robert Duvall (Ward 1), Hamid and Malboeuf, regional councillor Mike Cluett (Wards 1, 6, 7 and 8) and Mayor Gordon Krantz voted in favour of the nine-member council. Wards 2, 3, 4 and 5 regional councillor Colin Best and town councillors Arnold Huff man (Ward 5), John Pollard (Ward 6), Di Lorenzo and Lunau voted in the negative.

The town will now undertake a ward boundary review to determine how to distribute the population into four wards.

However, Williams said that fi rst the four local municipalities must vote on the composition of regional council and, if there is agreement, the decision has to be fi nalized by the province.

Then the consultants will present a proposal for new ward boundaries for Milton council to consider.