PelhamToday received the following letter about Niagara governance:
You series of articles regarding the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and housing study of regional government demonstrated two critical shortcomings:
- There doesn't appear to be a clear definition of the problem to be solved - but to be fair there were some hints - in good part thanks to Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati.
- Where is an opportunity for the people who pay the freight - taxpayers - to have some inputs?
The problem is simply that Niagara Region is over-governed, the regional administration being a mostly unnecessary fourth level of government, and the 12 small "lesser" municipalities in combination with the region result in a massive duplication of management overheads.
Getting rid of the regional administration does not mean that the 55 per cent of our annual property taxes that they consume will be saved. In fact it is not the region's or the 12 municipalities' workers that are redundant or unnecessary - it's the proliferation of managers and supervisors that populate Niagara's 13 administrations - all being supported by a tiny total population of less than one half million people.
As Pelham Mayor Marvin Junkin explained, Pelham, Wainfleet, Lincoln and Grimsby have all reached out to neighbouring municipalities with common characteristics and engineered a sharing of resources. The three cities are large enough to stand on their own and most definitely should not be merged with their agricultural cousins.
That is the path to less duplication of management overheads - our clever country mayors and councils have taken the initiative to do right by we taxpayers. We should encourage them to keep working at that and just maybe over the next few years a natural, practical and more cost effective series of mergers will evolve between them.
As for the region - either the municipalities or provincial ministries can assume responsibility for the region-wide services such as police, health, water supply, etc.
Something to press our councils to begin taking seriously.
Don Rodbard
Fonthill
