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February 1, 1996

AMALGAMATING WORDS AND CITIES

The English language has always allowed nouns to form couples quite indiscriminately. They start off as an unlinked pair, as in "train station". Many nouns later get hyphenated ("blood-pressure"), and some finally wind up in an indissoluble union ("minefield"). In the case of that obnoxious 80s term "lifestyle", the two words quickly found welded bliss.

I hereby report the sighting of a relatively new term: "city-region". This verbal couple seem to have also skipped the courtship phase and have gone on to a state of hyphenation, possibly using "city-state" as its model.

Now, is a city-region a region that's urbanized, or a city that is regionalized? The usual convention in English is the attributive noun comes first, so the operative word becomes "region". In French, it's reversed. Club soda is the name of a nightclub, soda club is a drink.

When the Pichette report on Greater Montreal came out in 1993, it used the term city-region. But the French term ville-r‚gion scared off many suburbs, as it puts the emphasis on "city". They thought it was another imperialistic takeover attempt by Montreal. In fact, the one thing the report did not recommend was amalgamations or annexations.

The Montreal region has to take itself in hand. But by stirring up the regional reorganization pot, the issue of amalgamations comes up. In any such rejigging, Quebec will probably want to seize the opportunity to reduce the number of municipalities in the MUC. No matter that the real problem is the fact that two-thirds of the 1401 municipalities in Quebec have less than 2,000 people, and that they are just about all rural, and that Quebec's endemic rural fixation means the minister of Municipal Affairs has to spend most of his time on rural matters - any talk of the Greater Montreal Region brings with it the threat of amalgamations.

Yet, not to push for regional cohesion would be to relegate our urban region to the role of a backwater in the North American economic ocean. And, you see, I don't happen to believe that amalgamations are a necessary way-station on the road to Montreal Regional unity.

Last Friday, the then-minister of Municipal Affairs, Guy Chevrette, said that he would produce a list of potential mergers in the MUC this autumn. "There is good reason to combine a multitude of services. We could make extraordinary economies of scale," he says. I always say that if coalescing cities led to such cost savings, then the City of Montreal - itself a product of many amalgamations, would be the leanest-run city around!

"Amalgamations can create diseconomies of scale" says the recently-released report on the Greater Toronto Area "city-region". It refers to a study that predicted the Ottawa-Carleton mergers would result in a 5.5 to 16.5% increase in operating costs. Another study by Brock University economists found that costs increased with the size of municipalities.

We always have to keep a weather eye open for signs of merger mania.
Peter Trent more on Amalgamation
    

February 8, 1996

REGIOMICS

My pleasure on learning that we would get a cabinet minister just for the region of Montreal was somewhat diluted when I heard Serge Menard (the newly-minted minister in question) talking about amalgamations of cities in the MUC. Even Pierre Bourque was quoted as saying it was "obvious" to reduce the number of MUC municipalities. When I confronted Bourque on that, he said he was misquoted - he was referring to cities off-Island.

Why should we worry about such talk? Well, I don't think anyone is suggesting annexation of Westmount - if they did, they would have the fight of their lives from this mayor - but smaller cities in the MUC might get pressured to merge. As the PQ pushes for decentralization, Quebec City bureaucrats - relying on their habitual omniscience - may deem some MUC towns just too small to deliver the wider range of services needed.

But who knows? It might even be in the interest of certain towns to merge. For example. The 12 cities that make up the West Island (Dorval and points west) share many demographic similarities and municipal services. Imagine if they all voluntarily amalgamated into one powerful city with a population of 210,000. Such a city would be wealthy (only 4% of their population get government income assistance compared to 14% for the MUC); and, not unimportantly, it would be 66% non-francophone. And federalist. Quebec might not be so happy with such a response to their perennial call to arms for MUC mergers. Talk about handing the partitionist movement an anglopolis on a silver platter!

But Island amalgamations won't solve the problems facing the Greater Montreal Region: certainly it won't help curb the urban sprawl caused by fiscal imbalance, over-zealous highway-building, and a collapsing core. And it does nothing to attack the economic gangrene that's set in while Quebec agonizes over its destiny. Indeed, any change in local towns could further upset an already-anxious anglo population. Yet Menard has made it a point to make warm and fuzzy overtures to Montreal anglophones.

Menard also wants to resurrect the 1993 Pichette Report that recommended a light regional structure for the Montreal region. Many recommendations of the Greater Toronto Task Force have an eerie similarity with the Pichette report. Their problems are different, but Toronto is in danger of beating Montreal past the post in getting their region to work as a team. The GTA task force said get rid of Metro (Toronto's MUC) and the four Metro clones that surround it. Pichette said get rid of the 12 counties surrounding the MUC and turn the MUC into a true intermunicipal service agency. Guess where that idea come from?

The GTA Report came up with the mandatory vision statement, but used some pretty ungainly syntax: "Greater Toronto will be the place where people and businesses that can choose to be anywhere, choose to be".

M. Menard also must realize the time to create Greater Montreal is now.

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February 15, 1996

MIRABEL: NICE NAME, DUMB IDEA

I spent some time last week with Serge Menard, shortly after he was appointed Minister for the Montreal region. Menard is boyish-looking (i.e., he is older than I, but looks younger), and is quite soft-spoken. He was formerly the Minister of Public Security, after a career as a criminal lawyer and law professor. He's bright and candid.

Menard really put the cat among the pigeons when he mused publicly about a uniform business tax rate, amalgamations, and closing Mirabel. The off-Island mayors promptly called a press conference, upbraiding the minister for not including them in his round of social calls, and lashing out at Montreal and the Island suburbs for favouring "fiscal sprawl".

I'm president of the Conference of Montreal Suburban Mayors. A few years back, we considered adding the word "Island" to our already-cumbersome name, in order to distinguish (and distance!) ourselves from the off-Island suburbs. Are they really suburbs, anyway? Perhaps a recent coinage, "exurbs" could best describe them. After all, the "sub" in suburban means "adjacent" to the city - hardly a term that fits St Th‚rŠse or Chambly. Maybe they should be called "circumurban" or "posturban".

So when I read The Gazette headline "Don't trample us to boost Montreal: suburbs", I winced. It was not my group who made bellicose statements such as "You saw the Mohawk revolution at Oka. Well, there will be a suburban revolution". That little gem came from Hubert Meilleur, mayor of Mirabel. On radio, he went on to say that Westmount should disappear and revived the old Drapeau slogan of "une Śle, une ville". What had Westmount done to him? Never one for honey-coated words, Meilleur was especially out of sorts because Bourque appeared to favour the removal of international flights from Mirabel.

Mirabel airport was a colossal waste of money and good farm land. We are lumbered with a galling memento of the expansive and hubristic 70s. The damage the region's economy proceeds unchecked while we pretend that two can live as cheaply as one. When Mirabel adopted the white elephant as its logo, it was a pathetic attempt at self-mockery. We should have had the gumption to shoot the Mirabel elephant (and the Olympic albatross, too), rather than trying to keep this distant monster alive.

Daniel Johnson said at the time "we must seek to make both sites profitable and stop the debate". A nice big report recommended exactly that. All it did was paper over a problem. The flight of businesses continued while flights to Mirabel plateaued and more and more carriers abandoned the while elephant. Toronto's gain. Our loss.

Over to you, M. M‚nard or your replacement

February 22, 1996

ANOTHER REFERENDUM POST MORTEM

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was 1994. I had managed to keep our police station in Westmount. I also had managed to get Claude Ryan to give us an extra $900,000 grant (over and above our allotment under the infrastructure programme) for a combined fire/public security/ police building to replace our 100-year-old building on Stanton. All we needed was a place to put it.

In Montreal, their city council could have put it anywhere, as they don't have to subject zoning changes to public approval. We do, even for essential services such as police and fire. And it's only those residents who live in or adjacent to the zone who can vote. This is provincial law.

Any other Council would have simply rebuilt on Stanton. We, however, decided to take the politically-difficult route of trying to find a better location for it. We eventually came up with four possible sites - Gladstone, Hillside Lane, Bethune, and the old CP train station site. To avoid Council involvement, we decided to hire an independent real estate professional to negotiate with the owners of three of the sites, using identical criteria.

Because of a short fuse on the grant, we had to rezone all four sites concurrently, rather than sequentially. At the same time, prices had to be negotiated. This gave rise to confusion, but it kept the vendors honest - knowing they were not the only game in town. In retrospect, I think we should have gone with our two top choices (Bethune and CP), rather than trying to zone four sites at once. But we had no idea that some people would capitalize on our complex task by producing a mass of red herrings.

The Gladstone site was dropped early on, as it was really too close to the superstation in Montreal. And, because of citizen opposition, the zoning would never have gone through. Bethune was later dropped, as the best deal - a 99-year lease - came out at double the value of the land. Again, the nearby residents were solidly against the zoning. That left Hillside, with its poor location and (it turned out) high price, and the CP site.

I downzoned the CP train station site in 1987, along with the entire Glen Yards site, in order to preserve that fragile residential enclave at the bottom of Victoria. Now I'm hoist with my own petard. Zoning is like a ratchet: you can downzone, but citizens can stop even minor modifications.

Some time ago, Council decided it would be better to have a community, not a commercial, use for the train station, considering the residential zone near it. So the question was simple: do you want a Protective Services station or a small community centre in order to recycle the old station?

In the Great Train Station Referendum, emotions ran high on both sides. The "No" vote won by a close margin. Now, you would think that the leader of the "No" would accept his victory and spare us his rationalization ex post facto as to why he voted against the zoning change. But no. He has left a trail of questions that I feel duty-bound to clear up. Next week.

INFORMATION? YOU WANT INFORMATION?Feb 29

Puzzled citizens from all over Westmount ask me why local residents voted down the zoning change that would have recycled the old CP train station into either a Protective Services Station or a community centre.

It seems the most frequent accusation levelled at Council by some voters was the "lack of information". No information? Are they serious? After the zoning change sailed through with no opposition last summer, and after residents complained they had 1) not read THE EXAMINER, 2) not read the posted notices, and, 3) not gone to the public information meeting, we voluntarily went through the whole process again. No other city around would have given residents two kicks at the can. And did we get thanked for that? Not on your nelly.

We then had two more public information meetings, and Karin Marks held three Ward meetings. I sent a four-page letter on the whole issue to everybody who could vote. Councillor Marks sent at least two letters, not to mention those sent by local residents. Combined with extensive media coverage, it was a case of information overkill.

But misinformation abounded, with an absurd rumour about carving into the grass escarpment, or that a methadone treatment centre was possible.

Some voters complained they didn't know what the building would look like. Well, zoning changes never go into that detail - they just define the building envelope. We said it would be three stories high and take up one-quarter of the site. We were not about to hire an architect to design two different buildings before we even knew if the zoning would go through!

For some residents, it was important to know what the other sites would cost the city. This seems like fair request. But think. Could the city reveal the prices for the three different sites before we had an acceptable iron-clad deal? You can't negotiate these things in public. That is why we hired a professional to do it for us. And even if the voters knew that one site costs, say, $2 million, and another, say, $1.5 million - why would that affect their choice? Their objections to the zoning had little to do with saving the city money and everything to do with noise, traffic, and so on. Besides, if the cost of alternate sites was so important, why did they not just vote for the community centre, for which there was no other site?

To add to the muddle, it was reported three weeks ago that staying on Stanton would cost $2 million more. I never said that. But we are in danger of losing our grant, now that an extension is no longer possible.

It Burns me that the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley. Given the chance to do this all over again, I would have done some things differently. Such as polling people near the various sites before embarking on the long and convoluted zoning change process. Such as looking at fewer sites to avoid confusion in the public mind as to what was going on - a confusion exploited by some opponents of the zoning changes.

Peter Trent on Amalgamation

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