Opinion: Time to start with a new slate

Is getting rid of Shelburne Municipality the answer?
It may be time to forget amalgamation and concentrate on elimination of a government body – the regional municipality.

Elected officials and public servants have grappled with the financial challenges communities in rural Nova Scotia have faced - invariably opting to cede jurisdiction over towns to regional municipalities. And yet, we’ve seen no evidence that the future administration and/or development of rural communities is enhanced by transferring the administration of our towns to regional municipal administrative bodies.

So what is the right answer?

In my view, it is clear that municipal structures like regional municipal districts, that suited the nineteenth and early twentieth century, have failed to evolve to reflect changing needs and opportunities.

Moreover, a comparison of taxable property allocations between towns and regional bodies indicates that the old system has favoured regional municipalities at the expense of towns – encouraging residents and businesses to establish themselves outside of town boundaries. Historically, the province ensured the viability of regional administrative districts by limiting the size of Towns and providing regional bodies with significant land and healthy taxable property assessment areas.

A good example of this phenomenon is available here in eastern Shelburne County. Present boundaries provide the regional municipality with taxable property of 1, 818 square kilometres, while the two towns between them are restricted to an area that is 165 times smaller at 11 square kilometres.

The end result unfairly provides the municipal district government with a taxable property assessment of $356 million dollars while the two towns combined have a taxable property assessment of only $112.6 million. Indeed, one could argue that this division of taxable land has provided the province with a way to unfairly subsidize services in regional municipality on the backs of rural towns.

So what is the solution?

It may be time to start with a clean slate and set up a local form of government that better reflects and supports today’s realities and future development needs and opportunities. Let’s strengthen rural communities by strengthening our towns. Let us do away with the regional municipality and cede the land now administered by the regional municipality to our towns.

A boundary between the two towns at the Jordan River would work nicely and provide each area with a sufficient tax base to meet the area’s needs without an extra layer of government. Let’s not amalgamate, let’s eliminate an artificial government body in eastern Shelburne County. Our towns have financed these artificial government bodies through the allocation of taxable property long enough.

Ed Cayer is an entrepreneur and economist who owns properties in the Town and Municipality of Shelburne

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Town of Shelburne