Niagara municipalities take action amid potential government changes

Three Niagara municipalities held a special meeting Wednesday night to discuss the Ford government’s potential plans for the Niagara region.

In May, the province said the governance structure in Niagara would be reviewed to see if an upper-tier regional government was still necessary.

They’re looking to get ahead of any potential future changes to regional government.

“We just really did not feel that it would be wise to remain sort of flat footed, not be doing some pre-emptive thinking,” said the West Lincoln Mayor, Cheryl Ganann.

“Try to at least start having the conversations, start trying to understand what everyone’s hearing, what everyone’s not hearing,” said Mike Kirkopoulos, Lincoln’s chief administrative officer.

The mayors, councils and chief administrative officers of the township of West Lincoln, the town of Lincoln and the town of Grimsby held a joint meeting Wednesday night at the West Niagara Agricultural Centre and Fairgrounds.

The gathering prompted by the province’s decision in May to dissolve Peel region’s government, and review the governance structures in other regions including Niagara.

“There’s always the possibility that something could potentially be imposed, and so were not looking to do anything out of the ordinary, we’re just looking to be prepared in case,” said mayor Ganann.

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The province said in May a regional facilitator would be appointed to begin the review, but so far no person has been named, and the timeline for the review is unclear.

“We continue to seek an update, our thought is sometime in the next few weeks we’ll hear about that,” said Kirkopoulos.

A spokesperson for municipal affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark tells CHCH News a regional facilitator for Niagara will be named in the coming weeks.

Municipal officials say a shared-service model of some sort still makes sense in Niagara, due to the many smaller communities that make up the region.

“Police services, social services, I think about water and wastewater,” said Kirkopoulos. “There is a benefit to doing that on a regional scale.”

It was a closed session meeting, meaning it was not recorded or open to the public – officials saying the privacy due to what they call the sensitive nature of the subject.

“Because we don’t know a lot, because we’re hearing a lot of things from the province, I think sometimes when you don’t have data, you don’t have facts, its hard to some out with a position,” said Kirkopoulos.

The meeting was headed by a retired clerk and followed normal rules for going into closed session.

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