The Niagara region has 13 Chief Administrative Officers (CAO) versus Hamilton which has one city manager. In 2023 Niagara taxpayers paid over $2.9 million dollars on municipal CAO salaries versus the City of Hamilton that paid $321,598. Niagara taxpayers paid an astounding $2.6 million dollars more on this one municipal position alone.
Now let’s look at other duplicated positions across the 13 different municipal corporations. Does Niagara need 13 CAO; 13 finance departments; 13 planning departments; 11 fire services; 2 fire dispatch services and countless number of economic development officers many times working against each other to attract potential businesses to their city. As well as many other duplicated positions across the 13 organizations.
The Region of Waterloo two tier system suffers from the same duplication and overhead. Its time for one municipal government and not eight!
I encourage people to look at the source for this information and review the various duplicated roles and the cost for those roles Ontario Sunshine List. Just type in your City’s name and take a look.
Taxpayers in Niagara region can save money from amalgamation. And this is true of most of Ontario’s two tier regional governments. Outside of some initial upfront costs, there fails to be a convincing argument showing how amalgamation ends up costing more money in the long run.
The Province generating savings by simply making structural changes to services (i.e. fire, policing, garbage collection) and then using those savings for other spending priorities is not an example of amalgamation. They must return those savings to the property taxpayer in the form of property tax relief.
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