Under the Knife & Under the Gun: An Overview of Regional Government in Niagara<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cThe purpose of the brief is to provide factual information to inform the discussion on this important issue,\u201d says David Siegel, Professor of Political Science and author of the policy brief.<\/p>\n
Niagara\u2019s 13 municipalities elect 126 councillors, a number that many have criticized as being too high. Although the brief doesn\u2019t endorse a particular system or number of representatives, it warns \u201ctoo many councillors frustrate meaningful discussion around the council table; too few councillors weaken citizen access to councillors.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also cautions against making councils too small, as that would reduce diversity of gender, race, ethnic background and other characteristics.<\/p>\n
On the issue of service delivery, the brief says service duplication isn\u2019t generally a problem in Niagara, as most key services such as police, social services, fire and recreation are clearly distributed between Niagara Region and area municipalities.<\/p>\n
Areas that are shared between the two jurisdictions include economic development, planning, public transit and roads.<\/p>\n
The policy brief wraps up with the \u2018elephant in the room,\u2019 amalgamation. The brief argues that past amalgamations have not saved costs or reduced taxes, but there are reasons other than cost savings why area municipalities might wish to merge.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, this policy brief and the discussions following from it are aimed at positioning the Niagara community to potentially influence the direction of governance reforms,\u201d says NCO Director Charles Conteh.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope to provide a platform for separating facts from fiction in envisioning a governance reform that is tailored to the needs of the region,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Siegel and others from the NCO will be holding a workshop at Brock University April 16 to discuss the brief and possible ways forward for Niagara.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To merge or not to merge? That is one of the many questions Niagara and eight other Ontario regions will be grappling with as the province studies how to make municipalities more efficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":57126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7484,3319,1,4,5,38],"tags":[3095,2897,6981,295,63],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57127,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57125\/revisions\/57127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}