County of Barrhead councillors say that amalgamation should be a jointly-initiated process.
With regard to proposed regulations and amendments to Bill 20 – the Municipal Government Amendment Act, council reviewed a discussion paper sent to them by the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts &Counties (AAMD&C), at their meeting on Sept. 20.
While county manager Mark Oberg said the questions attached to the discussion paper were in reference to jointly-initiated proceedings, he said he expects that council will see another survey regarding amalgamations initiated by single municipalities in the near future.
“In our opinion, the only such proceedings that should be allowable are those jointly initiated,” he said.
One of the main points of contention stemmed from the fact that as it stands now, either municipality or the minister of Municipal Affairs can initiate the process.
“Right now the minister can initiate these proceedings and I seriously doubt they would be willing to reduce their ministerial powers,” Oberg said.
Some councillors said they felt the provincial government’s wording was intended to ease the fears of smaller communities, but the majority agreed that the minister should not be the only one with total control over the proceedings.
“If amalgamation is going to continue with one municipality initiating, it should only be if that one is significantly larger,” Coun. Doug Drozd said.
“If it isn’t a merger of equals, in the real world we call that a corporate takeover,” he said.
Coun. Darrell Troock agreed.
“I don’t think they [amalgamations] should be allowed if the requests only come from the minister of Municipal Affairs either,” he said.
“To me, the only way I would allow it to go on is after a certain amount of work had been done to justify the proceedings. You’d have to do some studies and have conversations first. To simply initiate it, it’s brutal. Look at what happened to us. I don’t even want to estimate what the last year has cost us over this.”
“Why Municipal Affairs insists on keeping singular-municipality initiated amalgamation in their legislation, I don’t know. In the proposed draft, it is now worded stronger than before. If it is going to exist, there should be qualifications,” Drozd added.
However, not all councillors saw a problem with the language of the proposed amendment.
Coun. Dennis Nanninga said unless municipalities are allowed to make such requests, he wondered how such processes could even begin.
“The word request implies that there is a desire and one side feels there are advantages to all parties involved and that is something that has to be explored,” he said.
“Imagine the headache though if we just announced we were going to start amalgamation proceedings with Woodlands County. I don’t think we would have very much success. I don’t think they [Woodlands County] would appreciate it either,” Troock said, adding municipalities stand a much better chance of success by first talking to their intended partners instead of simply foisting the process upon them.
