After almost 20 years, it’s high time for a further reduction of regional council, one that will also create a body more representative of Durham’s municipalities.
Pickering voters can have their say on the matter. Pickering council Monday night approved a question to be put on the municipal election ballot in October. It will ask Pickering residents if they support their local council asking for a smaller regional council. At the same time, the re-jigging would see seats distributed based on each municipality’s population.
Asking is the key word here as the decision lies at the regional level, not with Pickering council. That and the fact that regional councillors in January voted 15 to 9 against a question on the ballot had Councillor Doug Dickerson questioning if it was worth the effort.
“The sad fact is that it probably won’t have any effect at the Region,” he said.
Possibly, but we support Councillor Jennifer O’Connell’s position, namely that it’s important to push the issue. As she noted, growth coming to Pickering means the city will have a larger population than Oshawa in future years. However without a council shake-up, the city but will still be represented by four councillors at the Region, compared with eight in Oshawa.
“This is about sending a message to the Region,” she said. “The current system is broken and unfair.”
And the Region would be foolish not to pay attention to that message, especially if it is supportive by a large majority of Pickering residents. It’s also encouraging that regional council is obviously split on the issue.
As we have noted, council’s size is out of step with reality. When it was created 40 years ago, the concern that the rural, less populated municipalities would be at a disadvantage given there is far more people in the south was a big one. Thus the north was given two regional councillors each. They now represent just over 50,000 people. Again, Uxbridge, Scugog and Brock should have just one regional member and Oshawa should lose at least two or three. Pickering should keep its four.
And in the process, council’s size could easily be reduced by four members.
This would make the system fairer and regional council a bit less costly to taxpayers.
A previous report at regional council noted Durham council’s 28 members represent around 608,000 people. In Peel Region, 24 councillors represent almost 1.3 million and York Region, with a population of just over one million people, has 20 councillors.
Durham Regional council can and should clearly be smaller and more representative. Furthermore, there should be a mechanism in place to regularly review the size and make-up of council.
Say it with a tick of your ballot this fall.
-- Pickering News Advertiser
02/26/2014