John Jensen

The age-old discussion on the North Shore about amalgamating the City and District of North Vancouver has, I am told, risen again. It is not a good idea. Here's why:

• The two municipalities already share costs in two of the biggest expenditure items -- policing and recreation. Costs for water and sewer treatment are already shared among the other municipalities in the Lower Mainland. There are or minimal savings to be achieved by combining the rest.
• There is considerable evidence that amalgamation of municipalities does not bring more responsive or lower-cost service. Robert Bish, Professor Emeritus of Public Administration and Economics at the University of Victoria, has written extensively about this. As he explains, "Activities that are labour intensive, difficult to measure, and performed frequently and regularly are likely to possess diseconomies of scale-that is, the average costs actually increase with the size of the organization producing the service." In Ontario, for example, some municipalities are actively working to de-amalgamate.
• The two municipalities are very different. The City is more urban, dense, and has a higher population of single people and renters; the District is sprawling, with more wealthier, long-term residents. The City has 84 people per hectare of taxable land, the District has 6. The City's median household income is $49,486 and the District's is $77,032. 53% of City residents live in privately-owned homes; in the District 81% do. Twenty percent of City residents have lived there less than a year; in the District the figure is 12%. These are significant differences that require different types and levels of services that in turn require more local representation.
• The City and District's financial situations are very different. The City has no debt and cash reserves per capita of about $3500, among the highest in the province. The District has debt per capita of about $370 and cash reserves per capita of about $1400. Negotiating an equitable arrangement for this would be difficult.

If municipalities were in the business of shipping coal or producing widgets, then the economies of scale would be so obvious that amalgamations would be the right thing to do. But municipalities don't ship coal or produce widgets -- they deliver highly-localized services -- 70% of their budgets go to salaries. As such it's difficult to squeeze more efficiencies by simple mergers. And even if they are merged, salaries nearly always go up to those of the highest level amongst the combined municipalities, eating away at any of the savings. When you combine that with the loss of localized representation, it's clear that wholesale amalgamations for their own sake are not worth the effort. That said, there is no reason why municipalities can't cooperate on sharing costs. They already do, as I noted above, for water and sewer services, policing, and recreation. It may be time to consider pooling resources for certain capital-intensive needs -- there is no need, for example, for the three North Shore municipalities and two school districts to each have their own works yard, something that Councillor Heywood in the City has said.  There may be a possibility to share investments and operations costs for fire protection services, as well. Acting on opportunities like these on an individual basis is the best way forward.