It’s been said politicians come and go, but bureaucracies go on forever. They are not subject to re-election.
That is one reason Ontario revived amalgamation talks in the late 1980s, though the issue had never truly gone away. Bureaucrats came up with the first merger plans years earlier – and waited.
Municipal amalgamation goes back to the 1950s in Toronto, but talks of merging old York County started in the late 1920s. In 1954, Metro Toronto was born.
Within a decade, the province started others, as regions or reorganized counties. While bureaucrats liked dealing with fewer entities, politicians were forced to call a halt. By the early 1970s, there was doubt about electoral prospects if the provincial government continued its path, because tales of high spending and major tax increases created no love for the new structures. Cambridge voters (formerly Preston, Hespeler and Galt) were furious to lose their cities. The Regions of Ottawa, Carlton and Waterloo were the last amalgamations of that era.
But, amalgamation never died.
By the late 1980s, councils were again talking about mergers – either forced or, if politicians were smart and willing, they could create their own future.
In the late 1990s, Wellington County’s transformation from 21 to seven lower tier municipalities mirrored the changes across Ontario, where, guided by provincial legislation, the number of municipalities was reduced by more than 40 per cent between 1996 and 2004, from 815 to 445.
In early 1990, Elora and Pilkington Township started merger discussions, but those talks were secret. The argument was there should be a proposal to consider. Nichol Township was asked to participate, but refused. It surrounded not only much of Elora, but also Fergus.
Soon after the election of 1990, the Elora and Pilkington merger talks came to a vote – and both councils rejected it. It was half a decade before serious talks resumed, and the municipalities that led the charge were West Garafraxa and Nichol townships, now part of Centre Wellington.
One reason was terrible planning that created subdivisions around Elora and Fergus with minimal services, even though they appeared to be parts of the village and town. Neither village nor town could expand because their borders were mostly surrounded. Those townships wanted assessment without costs. In one case, Nichol ceded land to Elora only on condition the village take over another badly designed development – which resulted in the village spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair a mess that included gravel roads and a lack of sidewalks, catch basins and proper drainage.
The charge for amalgamation was led by two reeves: West Garafraxa’s Bob Wilson and Nichol’s George Pinkney. They constantly told citizens, “We don’t need five clerks; we don’t need five treasurers.”
Politicians in Pilkington and Fergus agreed and amalgamation talks began in earnest around 1997. At one of the first meetings of a committee of reeves, deputy-reeves, and the Fergus mayor, Arthur Reeve Doreen Hostrawser and Deputy-Reeve Clive Williams attended and said Arthur wanted to join.
Many believed it was self defence, to avoid being forced into a future merger with Mount Forest – and there were numerous suggestions that Arthur really did not belong in Centre Wellington, but the new committee welcomed that village.
Elora was adamant. It wanted nothing to do with a merger. At a final public meeting in the new Elora town hall, Reeve Mary Dunlop asked citizens if the village council should relent because, “After all, these people are our neighbours.” The consensus from the citizens was to keep fighting.
The amalgamation group made its case at a special county council meeting in Aboyne Hall. After 90 minutes of arguments from both sides, county council rejected the proposal.
Back then, municipal leaders had weighted votes at county council that reflected the populations they represented. For example, Clifford had one vote; Puslinch Township had five. There was a recorded vote and amalgamation was rejected 62-61. In pure numbers, councillors said no by a slim 11-10 margin. One councillor made a special effort to attend that meeting, having flown home from Asia that morning. Minto Township Reeve Jim Connell voted against the proposal.
But the saga was a long way from over.
Elora council was meeting soon after in committee, when someone from West Garafraxa Township council arrived to announce its council had voted to ask the province for a commissioner to determine amalgamations.
The provincial government wanted local governments to make their choices – or be forced. A commissioner was a way to force the issue, but a municipality needed to ask for one. If the province appointed one, the commissioner had the power to come in and set up whatever style of local government he (or she) desired.
Many opined that county council opposed the Centre Wellington amalgamation not because it was wrong to force Elora into something it did not want, but because several councillors believed a Wellington North municipality without Arthur was too small to be effective.
Others were buying time for what seemed to be inevitable. Others were moving ahead.
Erin Village and Erin Township discussed a merger that arrived a year before anyone else. There was some consideration it might want to create a “Triple E” by adding Eramosa Township, but the two easterly councils wanted to be on their own.
Drayton, Peel and Maryborough began talks, but Maryborough dropped out fairly quickly, leaving Drayton and Peel to create their own merger. Once amalgamation was finally settled, Maryborough joined Mapleton, whose name is a compilation of the three municipalities.
Oddly, there was little fighting over names. Erin Village and Township became the Town of Erin. Minto Township, Clifford, Palmerston and Harriston simply kept the township name and became the Town of Minto.
In northern Wellington, councillors quickly agreed to Wellington North Township. Centre Wellington decided a non-entity name would keep Fergus and Elora, two tourist towns, prominent.
Guelph and Eramosa Townships became Guelph-Eramosa. No problem there, either. Puslinch Township already had a name.
County council was also involved.
It hired Harry Kitchen and Doug Armstrong to create a report on the best way to reduce the 20 municipalities (the two Erins having already merged). Amalgamation would take a triple majority to accomplish: a majority at county council, a majority of the municipalities in favour, and those having a majority of the population.
Merger moves were now being made all over Ontario. The province was even forcing a second merger of Toronto with its surrounding boroughs. Wellington’s elections for the new structure were held in November of 1998.
Kitchen and Armstrong, in less than two months, laid out a new municipal structure with minor boundary adjustments for Wellington County. The merged municipalities had about one year meeting as the transition boards, to set up their new municipalities. The reeves and mayors, and their deputies from each municipality, comprised the transition boards. Those boards were given statutory powers to hire, fire, and organize the new municipality, even as the current councils remained in place.
Kitchen and Armstrong were adamant the first priority for the restructured Wellington County was to have an elected at-large warden – someone who would be a focus for county residents – in order to offer a better democracy and create citizen interest in what was happening with over 60 per cent of their tax dollars.
County councillors rejected that outright and while there have been changes to how the warden is elected and the length of the warden’s term, the number one recommendation is still not in effect to this day.
Once the first elections were held and the new governments started work, there were inevitable changes, problems and fallouts. A number of staff who had received top positions found themselves at sea in some instances, and also out of a job.
In other cases, some found the ward systems imposed by Kitchen and Armstrong difficult to understand when they had always elected councils at-large.
Minto and Mapleton dropped their ward systems completely. Centre Wellington toyed with that idea and, with widely skewed populations in its wards, eventually changed the boundaries, while keeping wards.
Minto decided it needed more councillors, despite the argument amalgamation was supposed to reduce the number of politicians. They added an extra councillor a few years ago in the form of a deputy-mayor.
The final composition of the county and its council looked different from the old one, which had been comprised of 21 townships, towns and villages. There are now seven municipalities and nine county wards for county council.
There are three northern municipalities, with a population of about 30,000, and they have about 6.5 representatives on the 16 seat county council. Centre Wellington, with about the same total population, has roughly 2.5 votes (in the one case where county municipal electoral boundaries stray well outside their township lines).
The merged Erin and Guelph-Eramosa each have two representatives, a mayor and ward councillor. Puslinch Township was deemed wealthy enough to stand on its own and it remained relatively unchanged. It has two representatives on county council.
Despite the belief, “We don’t need five clerks,” residents soon saw costs for local government rising.
At the first Centre Wellington transition board meeting, every staff member was guaranteed a job. The Guelph-Eramosa board was the only one that reduced staff. It gave workers eight months to re-apply for their jobs, with the idea that as many would be accommodated as possible. Most were – but not all.
There were other anomalies. In the first Centre Wellington Township budget, Pilkington taxpayers were whacked with an add-on fee of $100 just to bring that former municipality close to equality with others in the new Centre Wellington.
Downloading and municipal spending caused taxpayers to yell loudly and long about high costs. Cutbacks and costs left municipalities scrounging for money.
When the province insisted all employees making over $100,000 in salary and benefits be listed on a website each year, there were none from the lower tiers of Wellington for several years. Now there are many.
Some of the architects of amalgamation say one of the disappointments people saw in amalgamation was there did not turn out to be any savings in municipal governments.
Yet past Drayton reeve John Green, who still remains on county council today, said amalgamation turned out to be the salvation of rural townships and small towns, even though there were no savings to be had.
“Small towns and rural townships would not have survived had they not amalgamated,” Green said in an interview. “They could not have paid for all the things they had to do.”
He said rural townships once received 50 per cent of the costs of their roads, but that provincial grant was eliminated in the 1990s.
Green said there were some good partnerships in the old system, but amalgamation allowed the new governments to complete projects that would have been financially impossible in smaller units. As examples, he cited the new arena in Mount Forest, the sports centre in Marden and the bridge on County Road 8 in Centre Wellington that is the costliest in Wellington County history.
The amalgamated township was able to pay the huge price tag of just over $4 million for the County Road 8 bridge, but old Pilkington township could never have afforded it.
“That bridge would never have been built [were it not for amalgamation],” Green said.
Former Nichol reeve and first Centre Wellington Mayor George Pinkney agreed with Green that amalgamation allowed local governments to provide services – such as better equipment for local fire departments – that smaller entities would not have been able to manage.
As for amalgamation itself, Pinkney said, “It was inevitable due to the provincial government of the day.”
He said higher salaries in the new municipalities is something he had foreseen. “That seemed to be an inevitable trend of the times,” he said.
Pinkney explained when it came to hiring staff, there were people available, but to obtain the best people local government needed, “You couldn’t hire them at the salary they had been paying.”
Looking back, Pinkney, who has now been out of local government for a number of years, said, “It was a very challenging time … to look at all the different options. I think things have gone okay.”
Wilson, whose council forced the re-opening of amalgamation talks by voting to seek a commissioner, is not totally pleased with the results.
“I’m not as happy with it as I’d hoped I’d be,” he said.
He added the idea was to bring the entire municipal government structure up to date, but things happened along the way.
“A whole lot of other things got involved. Civil servants kind of hijacked the system. The politicians let the whole thing get out of their hands.”
Philosophically, though, Wilson said he believes, “It will ultimately be what we have to have.”
He noted that in places such as Dufferin County, where municipalities did not amalgamate, the townships are having trouble handling their road costs.
He left local municipal government as reeve of West Garafraxa and went on to become a county ward councillor. He said the amalgamation changes there were satisfying.
“Wellington County in general is in as good a shape as ever – or even better.”
But when he considers the lower tier governments, he does not see what he envisioned with amalgamation.
“I would suggest the local administrations in general have not been the success in cutting back costs as they should have been,” he said. “One reason is the accelerating administration salaries.”
But, again, Wilson said that might have been inevitable. He said salaries were starting to climb under the structure that amalgamation replaced. He added it is at least cheaper to pay seven treasurers today than 21 under the old system. He noted Dufferin County faces those high salary costs, some without the benefits of much amalgamation.
Today, after a dozen years, councils and voters appear to be getting a handle on their new government system, although that is truer in some municipalities than in others.
That means, of course, volatility in some, and safe, everyday government in other places.
For the most part, which type, or mixture of each, depends on the citizens and what they demand from politicians.
This is the first of an eight-part, series examining the amalgamation that reconfigured Wellington County from 21 municipalities to seven in the late 1990s.
