"Amalgamation"
...the costly experiment that failed
Regional Ottawa's rural
townships are worse off
now, than before amalgamation with the city.
If it's not
broken …why
break it?
Rural
residents in general, as those within the townships of the former
Region of Ottawa-Carleton, seem to have developed the good
old-fashioned, sustainable character traits of self-reliance and
independent-mindedness. The hard-working residents of the rural
municipalities learned, long ago, to live within their means. Yet,
rurals have always been big-hearted. Volunteerism has always
thrived, along with the classic rural characteristics of good neighbourliness, open generosity,
civility and hospitality.
Whenever
political issues needed to be dealt with, in the rural townships, residents would address
matters directly through one of their local councillors, or if
required, speak to it at the local council chambers. The rest of
the time, people went about their private business, making their
living with minimal disruption or incursion from local government,
which, over time had learned it had best work diligently, in
the public interest,
applying the requisite degree of thrift and prudence.
Lost representation means less
democracy
How things have changed since amalgamation! At present, we are
under-represented, and overtaxed. To make matters worse, the new
mega-city of Ottawa has spent most (if not all) of our reserves,
and is now continuing the self-appointed task of squandering money
we don’t have, to satisfy its insatiable spendthrift appetite for
non-essentials such as costly over-harmonization and petty social
engineering. The city is now in our face, at every turn, with some
new wasteful social program, invasive by-law, or other spending
boondoggle - ‘flavour-of-the-week’.
The new City of Ottawa, in three short years, has managed to
evaporate all of its transition grants and burn through most of
the reserves frugally put aside by its newly acquired “family
members” ---the rurals. It has raised rural taxes while reducing
services, and has closed most of the rural community centres
(which we built and fully paid for, before amalgamation, and
staffed largely with volunteers). Now the centres are closing, the
volunteers are gone, yet the bureaucratic costs of running the
city keep skyrocketing.
Where we once had a functional,
democratic say in our day-to-day rural affairs, we have now been
rendered virtually voiceless under the amalgamated city's "new
deal".
The bureaucratic
“take-over”
Representation of rural constituents has suffered enormously under
amalgamation. With that, comes the double curse of reduced
political accountability. A single ineffectual representative at
the council table is no longer capable of serving us. He/she is
simply outnumbered by the urban councilors, who are mere “rubber
stamps” for city-focused agendas. Part of the diminished
accountability is achieved by councilors deferring matters to
unelected bureaucrats (city staff and outside consultants). This
gives the unelected bureaucrats untold power over both the councillors and thus, over the public, as well. Urban councilors
are all too quick to defer to staff because that makes their own high-paying “jobs”
relatively worry-free, without the previous levels of stress or
responsibility. And since the staff are not accountable
to the public, and since the councilors can no longer do anything
without them, (since they’re doing their job for them), they’re
happy, too. Outside consultants are even happier, since they are
being paid five to ten times more per man/hour to do the same work
their internal counterparts should be doing it for. However, by
hiring outside consultants to do the work, responsibility has now
passed onto the “outside experts” ---whose level of incompetence
can no longer be challenged, because of all the money they’re
being paid.
City
Council’s disservice to its unwilling rural partners (by shotgun
marriage), is made worse by Ottawa’s Mayor, himself. He directs
council proceedings like a mean-spirited despot, producing a
narrow-minded, centralist-controlled cabal, with outward
appearances that are eerily similar to the operation of the
federal cabinet …and its attendant, disgraced, sponsorship program.
If
amalgamation got past us on the thinly veiled rationale of “cost
savings”,(1)
“economies of scale” and “built in efficiencies”,(2) then time has shown such logic to be
a lie and a fraud. Sadly, amalgamation has been the precise
opposite of what it was touted to be.(3)
What to do about
it? … If it’s broken ...fix it!
If one certainty has developed over the last three years,
it’s that the present abuses of process, through amalgamation,
cannot and will not be tolerated by rural residents for much
longer.
We are basically faced with two options:
Option One, is to go straight to de-amalgamation.
This is self-explanatory. The longer we wait, the more difficult
it would be to realize this option. (At present, at least, most of
the former municipal buildings have been retained by the city. Be
suspicious of any fast approaching “fire sales” of these
buildings, organized by the city, to “burn our bridges”, as it
were).
Option Two, is that prior to taking steps to
de-amalgamate, there would be a concerted attempt made to work
within the present amalgamation framework ---by substantially
“changing the deal”. Rurals would need to have proper respect and
representation restored. There would have to be checks and
balances put in place to restore local representation, and to
proportionately balance the rural taxes to fairly reflect the
relative level of services received. Urban bylaws often do not
suit in the rural areas. When it comes to many of the urban
bylaws, one size does not fit all. Governance of the rural wards
should be handled locally (as it always had been) for
greatest democracy --and cost efficiency. Ward boundary
"tinkering" does not solve the governance / effective
representation problems brought on with amalgamation. Likely, a
rural borough system should be one of the first options looked at,
to provide more democratic local representation.
These are just a few of the many areas requiring immediate
re-adjustment, if we rural citizens are to recover some of our
"stolen democracy".
Now is the next-best time to begin.(4)
1:
The Economic Arguments Against Municipal Mergers -
Rather than
expanding cities, we should break them up into an array of
independent, neighbourhood-based governments that would set
their own property-tax rates, elect their own officials,
and.....
2:
"Low
Expectations for Municipal Amalgamations in Ontario" -
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
- From an Ontario perspective, the cost savings benefits of
municipal amalgamation have been exaggerated. Costs do not
go down for two reasons. "Levelling up" happens when wages
are raised to the highest levels in the area being
amalgamated. Costs increase when free, volunteer labour is
replaced with paid labour. Amalgamation discourages the
"discovery process" where smaller governments have the
freedom to innovate and experiment with different ways of
service delivery.
3:
Discredited ideas and Utopian ideals driving
municipal amalgamations - C.D. Howe
Institute study
- Toronto, March 20, 2001: "Amalgamations forced on
municipalities by provincial governments are the product of
flawed nineteenth-century thinking and a bureaucratic urge
for centralized control. ...What's more, says the study,
smaller and more flexible jurisdictions can often deliver
services to residents at lower cost, throwing in doubt the
financial assumptions typically used to defend
amalgamations."
4:
A feeling
of ownership - Stittsville News - Editorial - April 6,
2004 -
"We
had something special in our previous lives under our 11 local
municipal governments. We have to get that feeling back and we
have to get back the aura of ownership by the people that we had
prior to amalgamation in 2001."