Waddell: Creating a new model
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- Published on Thursday, January 16, 2014
By: Ken Waddell
myWestman.ca
One of the benefits of being in the community newspaper business is that you get to trade papers with other communities. Reading how they do things in other places can be quite informative.
This past year has been one of forced and embraced change for many communities. The province of Manitoba forced amalgamation on municipalities with populations of under 1,000 people legislation has made for some interesting developments.
Here’s some of the more positive developments. Going back just a few years, Killarney and the RM of Turtle Mountain amalgamated. So did Shoal Lake and the RM of Shoal Lake. The RM of McCreary and the Village of McCreary are amalgamating as are the Town of Ste. Rose and the RM of Ste. Rose.
Boissevain and the RM of Morton are amalgamating as well. I believe the Town of Rivers is joining with the RM of Daly and the Town of Rapid City, I believe is joining with the RM of Saskatchewan.
There’s a common thread developing here that will strengthen those communities. All the RMs in question are aware of an ongoing reality and that is every resident, whether they live in town or in an RM need services. And most of those services are usually only found in an urban setting. It might be a medical clinic, a pool or an arena. It might be retail services, farm machinery dealers or a car dealer. It can be a wide variety of services but those services tend to congregate in urban centres.
A person tends to migrate to a particular urban centre which gives them the widest variety of services they need. And, for the most part, people tend to travel to or live in the urban centre that gives them the level of services they need, or at least the majority of services.
The common thread here is that across western Manitoba, rural areas are joining with urban centres to create new municipal entities that will serve the greater and common good. It seems like a good idea and it could spread further across Manitoba.
The reality is that everybody needs urban services. Some are provided by the province, such as hospitals. Some are provided by private businesses, such as car dealerships and machinery dealerships. But some services are provided directly by the urban municipal government. That may be the swimming pool or the sports grounds. In most towns, the arena, the community hall and the sports grounds are either provided by the town or are heavily assisted by the town.
Under the new amalgamations, there will be a sharing of expenses worked out by the new councils. Gone will be the days of duplicate or multiple municipal meetings, letters back and forth, agreements and disagreements. The chosen municipal regions like McCreary, Boissevain or Shoal Lake councils will work as units to provide the level of service needed by taxpayers.
It may be a good thing. Time will tell.
Where amalgamations haven’t taken place, a different system will have to be worked out. Certainly inter-municipal agreements have been used. But one thing that the amalgamation debates have brought into sharp focus is how those agreements may take place in the future.
More importantly, agreements will have to take place in an equitable manner. If one municipal entity has a facility that other municipalities want to use, then a decision will have to be made. Will the one municipality be a provider and the other a customer or will they be partners? There’s a big difference between partners and customers.
With a customer, a price is set based on costs and the customer can take it or leave it. With a partnership, there’s a mutually agreed investment. In the case of municipalities, the two biggest factors in deciding the level of investment will be assessment and population.
There are four very important words going forward for non-amalgamated municipalities: assessment, population, customers and partners.
If a municipality needs the use of a grader owned by another municipality, and hasn’t invested in that grader, then they shouldn’t expect a special deal. They will expect to pay the going commercial rate.
That logic will apply to a lot of situations, so municipalities will have to decide if they want to be customers or partners.
