Past municipal reviews offer history lesson for provincial announcement

Yorkregion.com
January 28, 2019
Ian Adams

A thorough review of 82 municipalities will be “an enormous task” says a university professor who has overseen the process for several municipalities over the last 30 years.

Harry Kitchen, professor emeritus in Trent University’s economics department, and the author of numerous works related to municipal finance and governance, said the task given to Michael Fenn and Ken Seiling is substantial.

“In my view, you won’t be able to do this kind of analysis in the short time period for all these places. There would have to be a ton of consultation, you’ll have to meet with the councils, all the regions and the counties, and the lower tiers, I assume there will be some public meetings -- when you put all those things together, those are time-consuming,” Kitchen said. “I don’t know how detailed it will be: will it be a framework for further study with some options?

“If you take a look at the number of municipalities and the fact a report has to be produced by early summer, there is a ton of work to be done in that time -- I don’t know how you’re going to do it thoroughly.”

Ontario to review regional government model including Simcoe County
Kitchen was appointed as commissioner to oversee a review of Victoria County in 2001; the result was the creation of a single-tier municipality, the City of Kawartha Lakes, out of 13 townships and six towns -- including the Town of Lindsay, which had the county’s largest population base in a region of largely rural communities.

In that case, Kitchen said, Lindsay was largely being taken advantage of in the county system by smaller municipalities that were content to see the larger urban area shoulder the costs.

Walter Borthwick, who was mayor of Wasaga Beach when Simcoe County’s 32 municipalities were amalgamated into 16 in 1993, said county restructuring turned out to be a positive thing as it somewhat erased the dichotomy between urban and rural.

“I think the urban municipalities became far more amenable to working with the rural municipalities when everyone realized they had a lot more common things they had to deal with,” he said.

Borthwick acknowledged there is always the fear on the loss of autonomy for a lower-tier municipality; in particular, during amalgamation discussions, there was a bitter fight between Wasaga Beach and the county over control of the municipal landfill site.

“Sure, I was the guy who jumped on the running board of the garbage truck, but in retrospect, it (restructuring) worked,” he said. “You always protect your home turf, you’re always worried that you will lose a degree of autonomy that you control costs on, and then you realize you control the costs, but you can’t afford to do (the service).”

“I think that turned out to be positive, because having the cost of waste management spread out over the county tax base, individual municipalities would not be able to do it.”

Kitchen was also appointed to review the Region of Niagara in 1988, but was given strict conditions by the then-Liberal government to only look at whether services could be migrated to either the upper or lower tier municipalities, and the composition of council -- but that he couldn’t change the number of municipalities.

The amalgamation of Victoria County into Kawartha Lakes was controversial; a non-binding plebiscite held two years after saw slightly more than half of voters favouring de-amalgamation. The province dismissed it as unfeasible.

Eighteen years later, Kitchen said the Victoria County’s amalgamation into a single-tier municipality was for the best. He also reviewed keeping the status quo, and creating a system with an upper-tier municipality and fewer lower-tier municipalities.

A 2015 study by the Fraser Institute that looked at three municipal amalgamations, including the City of Kawartha Lakes, concluded amalgamation failed to deliver cost-savings and efficiencies promised for both large and small cities.

“Did I do the right thing? Reflecting back 19 years later, I think absolutely,” Kitchen said. “If you talk to some of the municipal employees, they think it was the best thing that happened.

“There is the older generation who remember the old times, and they don’t like change anyway, they still don’t like it. People who are younger, who have moved in since, they don’t know what it was like and they think it’s fine.”

Kitchen found it surprising that Simcoe County was thrown into the mix with the regional governments. He also suggested that a review doesn’t necessarily have to mean it leads to amalgamation -- though he acknowledged that could be implicit within the terms of reference set for Fenn and Seiling.

“There could be some suggestions; maybe they’ll decide some of the regions are just fine, maybe they’ll talk about changing service responsibility,” he said. “The question is about viability and providing services and being able to fund them.”