By Alex McCuaig

Amalgamation

City, county and town talk amalgamation

Aug 31, 2019 | 3:15 PM

Brooks, AB – Three southern Alberta municipalities are considering amalgamation, motivated by the idea of reducing taxes. But critics say the move will reduce local representation.

The City of Brooks, County of Newell and Town of Bassano along with the villages of Duchess and Rosemary announced their joint Regionalization Working Group in December 2018. However, the two villages pulled out of the group on April 1.

Newell County Reeve Molly Douglass stressed no final decisions have been made regarding amalgamation but the motivation to consider the idea stems from the desire to reduce taxes for residents of all the partner organizations through building efficiencies within local government.

“Government is looked upon as being very inefficient,” said Douglass, adding the municipalities realized money for residents couldn’t be saved without reduction in the amount of government. “We have five municipal governments with administration and finance – all the things that it takes to run a municipal government. That is what lead us to this point.”

Brooks, Newell and Bassano collectively have a population of just over 23,000 with 24 elected representatives covering a land area of about 6,000 square kilometres.

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“Trying to keep our region financially healthy and strong and setting it above some others is why we started to have a look at this,” said Douglass. “And that is all that we’ve been doing.”

Brooks Mayor Barry Morishita also stressed no final decision has been made and the discussions which have taken place are publicly posted on the working group’s website with timelines, background information and the collective vision for the group.

“I know there is some resistance. Everyone is with an open mind and no decisions have been made,” said Morishita. “The committee and the people on the working group as well as the individual councils

are paying attention to what is being said and I’m sure they will make decisions to appropriately respond to those things.”

While amalgamation is new, regionalization of services for the municipalities within the County of Newell is not. Beginning in 2008, Brooks became the centre of the regionalization of potable water services in response to higher standards put on water treatment facilities by the provincial government through the Water for Life strategy. Despite some of the municipalities holding out from joining that initiative, all of them eventually joined the Newell Regional Service Corp.

For Rolling Hills resident Dave Stabbler, he has no problem with increasing inter-municipal cooperation, just with amalgamation.

Stabbler said his concern is that amalgamation will result in the shuttering of facilities such as the Rolling Hills Arena in favour of other such facilities which already exist within an amalgamated municipality.

“If you want to kill a community, you amalgamate,” said Stabbler.

He added that he gives credit for the idea of reducing the size of government to save money, “but the cost to dissolve the county in order to have the people go over to the city – the numbers do not add up.”

Stabbler said the costs to pay out staff made redundant would offset any savings. But he added he sees no problem with increased regionalization of services.

“I’ll take a 150 regionalization agreements over one amalgamation,” said Stabbler.

It’s expected the working group will release its recommendations in November for public consultation.