HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1988-03-30, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 1988. PAGE 5.
Court ty ref orm
Is advisory committee report progress
or trojan horse for regional government?
County councillors would get new names under the proposed changes
to the county government system in the Report of the Advisory
Committee on County Government: Patterns for the Future. Reeves
would become mayors and the county warden would be county
chairman, name changes that aren’t popular with current council
members.
BY KEITH ROULSTON
A proposal to reform the county
government system in Ontario will
either have little effect on Huron
County (according to its suppor
ters), or be a trojan horse sneaking
regional government into the
county system (according to its
critics).
The report of the Advisory
Committee on County Govern
ment: Patterns for the Future was
released earlier this year and has
already brought two strong de
bates at Huron County Council.
The issue will come up again at the
April meeting of council next
Thursday when councillors will
vote on whether or not to support
the 36 changes proposed in the
130-page report.
The advisory committee was
made of Ray Haggerty, M.P.P. and
three county and regional council-
lorsfromacrossthe province. It
was given the task of looking at a
county council structure that has
been in effect (with some altera
tions) since county government
was established under the Baldwin
Act of 1849.
Counties originally were set up
to handle a very limited range of
services from maintaining a county
road system, to operating the court
house, county jail and registry
office and establishing homes for
the aged. These were services, that
served people in more than one
municipality and required more
resources than a single municipali
ty could provide.
In the past 50 years, the report
notes, the number and type of
services provided by counties have
changed. “While the province has
taken over administration of jus
tice, counties have become involv
ed to various degrees in such
things as delivery of social ser
vices, land-use planning, libraries,
building inspection services, eco-
nomicdevelopment, recreation
and cultural services and waste
disposal.’’ However, thereport
states, as the number and diversity
of services provided increased, the
need for a larger geographic and
economic base became evident,
but the issue involved became
more difficult, controversial and
political in nature.
There are problems too in the
great diversity of the size of
communities and how much repre
sentation each municipality should
have. The Village of Sturgeon
Points in Victoria County, for
instance, has a population of only
65 while in Frontenac County,
Kingston Township has almost
30,000 people.
The committee set out its goals
and objectives as: recognizing the
importance of maintaining local
decision-making and identity; im
proving public understanding of
the county system and promoting
good communications between the
county and local municipal coun
cils; providing flexibility to recog
nize the differences among coun
ties so that individual counties can
respond to their own needs in their
own way; and opposing blanket
Flexibility
a goal
legislation that effects all munici
palities equally without letting the
individual local county councils
decide what is the best level of
government to provide service and
how councils should be made up.
In tackling such a wide variety of
problems across the province
many of the committee’s 36
recommendations don’t effect
Huron County residents at all.
Some deal with the problems of
having separated towns and cities
within a county (Stratford and St.
Marys for instance are separated
municipalities and don’t sit on
Perth County Council. Other re
commendations deal with reforms
Huron County has already under
taken such as a recommendation
for county wide reassessment and
establishing a county health ser
vice.
For the public a handful of
recommendations will be the only
visible change in the county system
if the recommendations are accep
ted and put into law by John
Eakins, Ministry of Municipal
Affairs for Ontario. The most
notable are title changes. Saying
that many reeves who spoke to the
hearings of the committee com
plained about their constituents
misunderstanding of their titles,
the committee proposed that the
title of reeve be changed to mayor
for all municipalities.
Few councillors, even those
supporting adoption of the report
likedthe name change. Reeve Tom
Cunningham of Hullett for in
stance says he’s not sure he wants
to be called mayor but he might
have to be if he wants some of the
other good things proposed in the
package. He said he still has
problems with the warden being
called chairman and would like the
name to stay the same to differen
tiate counties from regional
governments.
Many councillors are perhaps
even more opposed to this change
in title of the county warden (the
advisory committee said wardens
complained people thought they
enforced game laws or ran a
penitentiary) to county chairman.
The title chairman is the same as
the title used for the head of
regional government and the very
comparison makes Huron council
lors nervous.
The five towns in Huron would
be affected by a change in
representation. To improve com
munications between the county
and town governments the com
mittee proposes to have the heads
of all councils sit on county council.
Presently the mayor of towns does
local municipal business while a
reeve and possibly a deputy reeve
(depending on the population of
the town) represent the town at
county council. Under the new
scheme the mayor would sit on
county council and if a second
representative is needed he or she
would be called ‘Tocal/county
councillor’’.
The next recommendation has
not met with enthusiasm at Huron
county council. Harry Worsell,
Reeve of Goderich says that as a
former mayor he knows how busy
thejob is already and thinks it is
going to be awfully difficult for the'
mayor to do both town and county
business. Marie Hicknell, Reeve of
McKillop says she has heard
people say the mayors are just
looking for a full-time job and
worries about that.
Lossy Fuller, deputy reeve of
Exeter points out that mayors have
to sit on all committees of their local
council and wonders, if the mayor
has to attend county council too, if
there is going to be pay to make it
worthwhile or if the mayor is going
to be asked to forego salary to
attend county sessions (to which
rural reeves like Turnberry ’ s Brian
McBurney acidly pointed out that
township reeves also have to
attend all committee meetings and
all have jobs they must take time
away from to attend council.)
Thomas Tomes, Reeve of Steph
en doesn’t like the title of “local
county councillor’’ for the second
representative and feels the name
should be “deputy mayor”.
The report recommends the use
of the secret ballot for the election
of the county warden (or chair
man), a move which, one councillor
joked, will produce a lot of liars
when people promise their vote to
one candidate, then give it to
another.
The report also proposed to let
counties decide if they want to have
a one, two or three-year term for
their warden/chairman. Past
Warden McBurney points out
“nothing but common sense pre
vents you from running for a
second term (in Huron) now.”
The most heated debate arises
over the 13th recommendation of
the report which reads: “Counties
be provided with permissive auth-
One proposal
stirs debate
ority to assume any local municipal
function the county does not
currently perform, or discontinue
providing a discretionary service
they do perform, where there is a
two-thirds vote of county council
representing a majority of the local
municipalities ...”
It is this clause that Exeter Reeve
Bill Mickle sees as the thin edge of
the wedge that will lead eventually
to regional government. In a recent
speech at county council he called
the proposal “a blueprint to take
over local government functions.
In an emotional address he told his
fellow councillors that if they
agreed to this proposal they were
hurting their own municipalities.
“The day will come when you will
be regionalized by process”, he
warned his fellow councillors. “It
may not come in my time but it will
come.”
His worries were echoed at last
week’s council session by John
Doherty, deputy reeve of Goderich
who said he found it troublesome
that the county council could
discontinue a service that some
other municipality wants to con
tinue.
These worries are swept aside by
supporters of the proposals.
County administrator Bill Han-
ly, for instance, claims that getting
a two-thirds majority of council
prepared to take over a new
municipal service is going to be a
very difficult task. Things have
been taken over by the county
before, he said, but only when the
local municipalities wanted the
county to take over. He cited areas
such as welfare and libraries. He
said he firmly believes that the
service should be provided at the
lowest possible level of govern
ment, starting with the individual
where possible, then the township
or town or village for things the
individual can’t solve and finally
the county if the problem is too big
for the individual municipality.
Reeve Mickle however feels that
Mr. Hanly is being naive when he
believes things won’t change down
the road.
Reeve Cunningham says that
the two-thirds majority provision
will actually make it harder to bring
changes in Huron where in the past
a bare majority of 51 per cent was
needed for the county to assume
local fuctions. He points to the
county’s decision to undertake an
expensive waste management
study. Blyth and Hullett, with a
waste disposal facility that should
have many years future use, were
not in favour of such a study but the
majority was and the two munici
palities had to go along anyway. A
municipality has to be prepared to
go along with what is the best for all
the municipalities, he said.
Just how much of the report will
be supported by council may be the
topic of a good deal of discussion at
the April 7 meeting of council. A
proposal was brought forward
from the executive committee at
the March 3 meeting which
recommended county council sup
port all the 36 recommendations
except the first recommendation
which asks the minister to conduct
areviewof “very small municipali
ties and separated municipali
ties.” There isdeb at eas to just
how small “very small” is and
councillors are uneasy with the
term. Reeve Cunningham says the
Association of Municipalities of
Ontario feels this item should be a
separate study from the rest of the
report and Mr. Hanly says the
proposal muddies the waters and a
lot of other good recommendations
in the report may be lost if the
clause is included.
Led by Reeve Mickle, however, a
vote on support for the other 35
proposals was delayed to the April
meeting. Many councillors felt
theyjust didn’t know enough about
the report so a special afternoon
session was added onto the March
24 budget meeting of council
where the 36 recommendations
wereexaminedone by one with
councillors having a chance to
make comments or ask questions.
It remains to be seen however if
councillors will be willing to accept
the whole package even though
they disagree with some of the
proposals or whether they’ll end up
voting approval for some clauses
and turning down others.
Supporters like Mr. Hanly ob- >
viously want to see the package
adopted. “The report is what
we’ve been asking for,” he told the
March meeting of council.