The discovery that, having crossed the 10,000 population mark, Sechelt will likely get a second SCRD director (and the SCRD budget will have to find around $30,000 to pay that director), along with some remarks by Sechelt’s mayor, have me thinking about local government restructuring.
Since returning to the Sunshine Coast in 2006, in time to cover the rejection of a proposed amalgamation of Gibsons, Elphinstone and West Howe Sound, I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s time for a serious look at a single local government for the area outside the shíshálh or Squamish nations.
In his January Mayor’s Message, Sechelt’s Bruce Milne raised the idea of closer cooperation and coordination among local governments.
“Do we really need 22 elected individuals to manage local government for a population of less than 30,000 people? Do we need four chief administrators and an equal number of chief financial officers?” wrote Milne, adding, however, that he was “not suggesting we reignite the discussion of ‘one government’ on the Coast.”
Mayor Milne may not be ready to go there, but I am.
As I watch Gibsons, Sechelt and the SCRD struggle with ever-tightening budgets, make little progress on measures like a joint garbage contract, and take a year between appointing the board of a new economic development agency and actually signing off on the agreement that will see funding flow to that agency, I wonder if a single government might be forced on us by the province.
I wonder, because I watched it happen when I lived in Nepean, Ont. Claiming it needed to end unnecessary duplication, rising costs, and political inertia, the Progressive Conservative government under Mike Harris cut the number of municipalities from 850 to 444 between 1995 and 2000. Nepean was pulled into the new City of Ottawa.
The Harris Tories were early adopters of the slogan-as-legislation approach to politics and pointedly called one of their bills the “Fewer Municipal Politicians Act.”
Debate continues about whether it was a success. It was certainly seen as an attack on local control over the future of municipalities, but there was also a feeling, at least in the Ottawa area, that if the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton (similar to the SCRD) had lived up to its founding ideals, the forced merger might have been avoided.
I’d much rather see evolution of a single Sunshine Coast government happen on our terms, and the reshuffling at the SCRD triggered by Sechelt’s growth is a perfect opportunity to start that discussion.
Just before returning to B.C., I lived in another city swept up in a shotgun marriage with Ottawa – Kanata. Tucked into the trees off a path near my house was a big steel Kanata sign. No longer visible from the road, it was a little neglected, and I used to joke that it was the city’s grave marker. I didn’t stop to mourn, because the sign also reminded me of the Shelley poem Ozymandias. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” the politicians of the former Kanata seemed to say, with the hubris of those who think political structures are forever.
(We covered some of this ground in episode 42 of our Coast Beat podcast www.coastreporter.net/1.9225019)
