EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a new Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park
Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti's call to amalgamate York doesn't fly with his fellow York region mayors.
Scrapitti put out a statement on Wednesday morning calling on the province to take "bold steps" to create a "new streamlined governance structure" in York Region as part of the regional governance reviews coming in the wake of Peel's dissolution.
Doing so would be a boon to municipal finances, Scarpitti said.
"The combined operating expenses of all 10 municipal governments in York totals approximately $4.4 billion," he said. "Consolidating into one city would result in significant savings in both operating and capital budgets."
York Region contains nine individual municipalities — plus one regional government — and several mayors came out against the proposal.
"That's not something I would be in favour of," said Richmond Hill Mayor David West in an interview with The Trillium. "The expressed interests in amalgamation, including cost savings and so on, have repeatedly not borne out."
"I was quite surprised to see this statement. One mayor in York Region does not speak for the other eight mayors," West added. "We are in a process right now where we are looking to find efficiencies in the two-tier government, and we're certainly enthusiastically looking forward to completing that. But amalgamation is throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
"I strongly oppose the amalgamation of York Region into a single-tier megacity," Aurora Mayor Tom Mrakas said in a statement. "It is quite disappointing that Mayor Scarpitti made such a statement – on such a complex issue that has a significant impact on people’s lives – before reaching out to all York Region mayors to better understand their perspectives."
"I acknowledge that within the current two-tier municipal structure, there are many opportunities to find efficiencies, reduce duplication of services and costs. However, I believe that this can be accomplished without the amalgamation of York into one city," said Whitchurch-Stouffville Mayor Iain Lovatt in a statement.
Amalgamation doesn't "reflect the majority wishes of the residents of York Region or the other elected officials in York Region. The idea of amalgamating all of York Region into one large city will not result in savings," said Newmarket Mayor John Taylor in a statement.
The province won't make any changes to any regional governance structure without going through previously-announced processes.
"The province will be naming regional facilitators for the upper-tier municipalities of York, Durham, Halton, Niagara, Simcoe and Waterloo in the coming weeks. While the review process has not yet begun, the province has no intention of unilaterally imposing amalgamations on municipalities in these areas," said Victoria Podbielski, press secretary for Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark.
"Facilitators will be tasked with making recommendations to ensure municipal governance structures can effectively respond to the issues facing Ontario’s fast-growing municipalities today, including tackling the housing supply crisis."
In mid-May, Clark announced Peel Region will split apart. On Jan. 1, 2025, Brampton, Caledon, and Mississauga will be stand-alone cities.
During the same press conference, he said five other upper-tier municipalities — Durham, Halton, Niagara, Waterloo and York — will go through a review process to determine if each of the regional governments are working well, and if the individual municipalities could also make due on their own. Simcoe was added to the list later.
The facilitators were initially announced in November with the goal of looking into whether the regions should get strong mayor powers, and to advise on "the best mix of roles and responsibilities between upper and lower-tier municipalities" for tackling the housing crisis.
York Regional Chairman Wayne Emmerson didn't comment on the proposal itself.
"York Regional Council has not discussed any option or taken a position on this issue," he said. "At this time, the province has not yet appointed a provincial facilitator to review the mix of roles and responsibilities within York Region’s two-tier governance structure. Once appointed, York Region looks forward to the opportunity to explore efficiencies and to demonstrate how we work to sustain and grow strong, caring safe communities and best serve our residents."
Another York mayor wasn't as categorical as some of her colleagues.
"At this time, York Regional Council has not had the opportunity to discuss the review which will affect all nine of our municipalities. Before any opinions and perspectives are shared, I think it is important to understand what is being proposed and contemplated. I look forward to learning more and participating in the provincial review and at that point I would be happy to share my perspective on this matter," said East Gwillimbury Mayor Virginia Hackson.
King Mayor Steve Pelligrini, Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca, and Georgina Mayor Margaret Quirk did not comment by the time this article was published.
York is the second biggest upper-tier municipality in the province, behind Peel.
Scarpitti's Markham is the largest of York's nine municipalities with a population of about 340,000. Vaughan is just behind, with about 320,000 people. Richmond Hill rounds out the top three, at just over 200,000 people.
To Zachary Spicer, a professor of political science at York University, Scarpitti's proposal is a bit of a head-scratcher.
"It's quite a sea change from the late 1990s and early 2000s when every mayor was vigorously opposing amalgamation. I'm not sure what Markham would get out of it," he said.
Decades of research on amalgamation hasn't shown it to be a cost-saver, Spicer said.
"What you're doing is creating one large government, and you're still serving the same amount of people and doing the same sort of things," he said. "The thought is that if we have one government, we wouldn't need seven mayors, or seven fire chiefs. But you don't necessarily get to eliminate jobs like that because you are still running a much more complex organization."
"In the end, you still have the same amount of people that you need to provide services to, so you can't really cut back services to save money. The savings that you get through eliminating senior positions is usually balanced out by hiring more people at the junior level," he said.
In fact, amalgamation often has the opposite effect.
"Costs tend to go up and property taxes tend to go up. When we look at the impact of Toronto's amalgamation, we certainly didn't see any cost savings. Costs went up substantially afterwards," Spicer said.
Amalgamation does, however, provide for more equity through harmonizing services.
"Lower-tier (municipalities) that had lower service levels than then the others, amalgamation brings up service levels in underserviced communities," he said.
"You have a much larger jurisdiction under one single government, so you can take property taxes from very wealthy areas and use that to provide parks and recreation services and everything else in lower-income areas. The main benefit tends to be equity," he said.
-With files from Joseph Quigley and Jack Hauen
