By Emily Stonehouse
If there’s one singular reason for amalgamation, please let it be fewer meetings.
It’s a sticky topic. I get that. Over the course of five meetings as well as multiple conversations with township staff and members of the public this week, I am starting to understand more and more that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution.
When I worked as a senior staffer at the Township of Minden Hills, I was adamantly in support of merging our municipalities. Namely because I carry a steadfast desire to get things done. I lack the patience for process, for red tape, for spinning in circles.
And with items circulating in all corners of the county about who does what and when and how, streamlining the process seemed like the right box to check.
But as I step away from that professional role and look at the system through the eyes of the average taxpayer, it becomes a multi-faceted issue. Concerns around identity, grant funding, cost savings, and infrastructure all bubble to the surface. Some municipal staff have worked above and beyond to create their brand, to maximize their budgets, while others aren’t working with the same priorities in mind.
All this to say, I’m on the fence.
What was once so clearly black and white has now been muddled. Colours and chaos elbowing their way to light. It’s significantly more complicated than removing the boundary lines and smacking the same name on every corner.
But the irony of presenting nearly the exact same presentation five times on the efficiency of streamlining in the most inefficient way possible is not lost on me. We’re paying for each and every one of these presentations. A total of $200,000 for the study as a whole.
Over the course of the five meetings (yes, I tuned into all five), a few councillors made the suggestion that this doesn’t need to be an all or nothing situation. County Councillor Cec Ryall brought up merging the planning departments, and what that could look like.
But my suggestion, as a person who has watched an awful lot of meetings this week, is to start even smaller.
Start with the meetings.
Those five meetings very easily could have been one.
And I’m not just saying this from the perspective of someone responsible for covering this content. This was an opportunity to get every single person involved into one room. And anyone who has been in a room of movers and shakers knows that when those people are in the same space, magic can happen.
And while we sit together and say we all get along, I have never seen every member of our local councils in a room together at once. Wouldn’t this have been a prime opportunity? Blurring the boundary lines across the board, removing the upper and lower tier hats, and realizing that everyone in that room is there for the exact same reason.
Because they care.
In all five of those meetings, the exact same concerns came up. The exact same points of pride were shared. The exact same questions were asked.
Sitting in one room and realizing we aren’t so different from our neighbours can provide an opportunity to take that first step into sharing services, crossing boundaries.
Because it’s not just black and white. There’s colour and chaos added to the picture anytime change is afoot.
And we need to start small, if we want to dream big.
