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Eight Municipalities. How Many Services Really Need to Be Delivered Eight Different Ways?
Dufferin County is doing something municipal governments rarely enjoy doing: examining whether the way government itself is organized still makes sense. The County’s Municipal Program Review has required special meetings of County Council and is examining the delivery of services across the County and its lower-tier municipalities. A July special meeting was rescheduled to August specifically so councillors could continue the discussion. That does not mean Dufferin is heading toward amalgamation, nor should it.
Amalgamation is often treated as though it automatically saves money. Ontario’s experience has shown that combining governments can also harmonize wages upward, create larger bureaucracies and distance decision-making from residents. But the opposite assumption—that every municipality must continue delivering services independently because it always has—is just as questionable. Dufferin contains eight local municipalities. Residents ultimately fund the entire system through some combination of county and local property taxes. Behind those visible tax bills sit accounting systems, software, procurement, human resources, planning expertise, road operations and administrative functions.
Some need to remain local. Others may not. A municipality could retain its own elected council and community identity while sharing an IT platform. Several municipalities could jointly purchase vehicles. Specialized planning or procurement expertise might be shared rather than duplicated. Fleet management, insurance, payroll and cybersecurity are other obvious candidates for examination. The right test is not ideological.For every function, publish three numbers:
What does the current system cost? What would a shared model cost? What would residents gain or lose? If the saving is trivial, preserve local delivery. If it is substantial and service quality remains intact, taxpayers deserve to know why duplication should continue.Dufferin’s review could therefore become something more useful than another municipal study. It could answer a deceptively simple question: How much local government is necessary to preserve local democracy—and how much is simply administration?
AFFORDABLE HOUSING AT 80% OF MARKET RENT: BUT WHAT IF THE MARKET ITSELF IS UNAFFORDABLE?
Dufferin County describes some of its affordable units as renting at approximately 80% of market rent.
That sounds reasonable—until rents rise so far that 80% is still beyond the reach of a minimum-wage worker, senior or single-income family.
Dufferin is also trying to develop three supportive-housing sites, while identifying government construction funding as a challenge.
Perhaps Ontario needs to reconsider the very definition of affordable housing.
Should “affordable” be tied to market rents—or to what local people actually earn?