News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 11K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
EarthCam Time-Lapse Documents Rafael Viñoly-Designed New Stanford Hospital Construction
 43K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
Resort Town
 6.6K     0 
N

Northern Light

Superstar
Member Bio
Joined
May 20, 2007
Messages
41,775
Reaction score
129,939
It appears the province is set to move in the next few weeks to consolidate Niagara Region in some measure.

The provincially appointed Regional Chair has sent letters to the local mayors asking whether they support (prefer) full amalgamation (single-tier), or a 4-city- model that would retain the region as well.

Based on assorted media and personal sense.....it appears the province is leaning towards the 4-city model.

New Niagara Falls (NF, Fort Erie and NOTL)

New St. Kitts (unchanged)

New Welland (Welland, Pt. Colborne and Thorold)

New??? (All the rural areas, Pelham, West Lincoln etc.)

Some media:


Gale pushes for fewer politicians, potential amalgamation

Regional Chair Bob Gale is advocating for reducing the number of municipal politicians and possibly amalgamating local municipalities throughout Niagara Region as a means of reducing costs, enhancing governance and improving efficiency. Gale sent letters to local mayors and the Ontario Minister...
niagaraindependent.ca niagaraindependent.ca

I broadly favour this, though I am always deeply suspicious of anything this provincial government gets up to by way of meddling, one is always stuck wondering about alterior motives.

I must admit, I always though Thorold would be folded into St. Kitts.
 
I'm not in favour of amalgamations for the sake of amalgamation. What is the benefit of Fort Erie joining Niagara Falls? They are geographically and culturally distant.

Also, you're going to anger a lot of blue-voting electors by merging NOTL with NF. Also, why should Thorold merge with Welland? It'd be much smarter to split Thorold up into St. Catharines (the continuous urban area between Beaverdams and the lakes and Town Line & St. David's), Niagara Falls (everything east of the canal) and Pelham/Welland. If amalgamation is absolutely necessary, we should be smart and redraw boundaries, rather than just combining more of them together.

We really should be having open, good-faith, and thoughtful discussion on how we want our municipalities to look like and how they should function. Instead, we get whatever Mike Harris or Doug Ford dream up.
 
ShonTron said:
What is the benefit of Fort Erie joining Niagara Falls?
Click to expand...
Fewer municipal politicians. Ford's a big fan. He had his sights on Simcoe County for a while.

Dinking around with municipalities has been a CPO parlour game going back to Mike Harris. Even further if you leap back to regionalization.
 
It seems weird to me that the Fonthill area in Pelham would not be lumped in with Welland and Port Colborne.

I could also see Wainfleet and West Lincoln fitting together well, and putting together Grimsby and Lincoln makes some sense. All four together feels a bit strange though.

I also feel like the province needs to be clear on what its goal is. If the goal is lower average property taxes, then it needs a detailed plan on how amalgamation will achieve that. If the goal is fewer local councillors, then I wonder if there are other ways to achieve that. You could ask for a few of the smaller municipalities to merge, and ask all the municipalities to cut the number of councillors. Several of the local municipalities have multiple councillors per ward.

Also, I feel like this would mess with Niagara regional transit. If this goes ahead, perhaps the province should step in and take responsibility for some regional bus routes by making them GO routes.
 
Fewer politicians should never be the goal of any amalgamation.
 
Maybe Ford got bored of dicking around with Peel Region. First they wanted to get rid of the region. Then they decided to keep it. Now they're talking about redrawing the boundary between Mississauga and Brampton to give Brampton the airport. Which I don't see Mississauga ever agreeing to, but DoFo will do whatever he wants I guess.

If he gets pushback in Niagara, I could see it being delayed as much as whatever he is doing in Peel.
 
Niagara is a pretty large heterogeneous area. A single municipality with what, 1 councilor for what are whole cities today is going to lead to a lot of very angry residents and poor representation on local issues.

1852 sq km, or 3x the size of Toronto.

I think Ontario has bigger problems to address than this.

en.wikipedia.org

Regional Municipality of Niagara - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top