By Chris Beach

Northern View

Northern View – Amalgamate Regional Districts with Municipalities

Mar 1, 2023 | 1:34 PM

If you’re ever spent any time in the world of local government, you know there is a secret, an unspoken truth, you might even say it’s the elephant in the room that no one dare speak of:There isn’t really a need for regional districts to exist anymore as separate entities from the municipalities they surround.

Today, rural areas surrounding cities are much less isolated than they used to be, with better roads, communication networks and internet, and the need for separate political representation and a whole additional order of government has largely disappeared.

Perhaps more importantly, most regional districts areas exist, economically, culturally, socially, with and in connection to a major town or city, right in the middle of it. Take for example, Beaverly or Salmon Valley, are these communities really not part of Prince George?

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While they have their own character and local traditions, they’re also part of the larger Prince George community and they use the same commercial and government services that we do. Their children play in local hockey rinks, they shop in the same stores and they eat in the same restaurants.

If we united the regional district and the city, we would keep the same political representation from Beaverly and Salmon Valley, but those reps would serve on a Municipal Regional District Council rather than a separate Regional District Board… and we would all be on the same team.

We could eliminate unnecessary duplication that local taxpayers currently foot the bill for, like separate finance and budgeting, administration and planning departments, and the list goes on.

Not only would this save countless millions in local taxes moving forward, more importantly it would eliminate the competition for provincial and federal government grants and loan programs.

This would be one of the most obvious advantages because regional districts and municipalities are often fighting over the same piece of pie. If they were on the same team, they could distribute the resources more fairly across the region.

With ever increasing government bureaucracy and debt, now is the time that we should be simplifying government and making it more efficient.

Sound crazy? It’s already been done here in BC in 2009 when Ft. Nelson amalgamated with its regional district to become the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality. And it seems to be working out just fine for them.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.