Two studies of particular interest to rural Saskatchewan were released late last week.
They may have had municipal officials across the province burning midnight oil.
The studies are linked to two others released this spring, the interim report of the Task Force on Municipal Legislative Renewal, led by Joe Garcea, and another on the same subject by University of Saskatchewan professors Jack Stabler and Rose Olfert.
The first of last week’s reports centred around the results of 17 public hearings held across the province.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
The report gives neither recommendations nor conclusions but is a summary of what the commissioners heard, liberally backed by excerpts from many briefs and submissions that were presented.
The second report demands the closest scrutiny. It has a bureaucratic title, A Review of the Representative Cost-Benefit Analysis of Municipal Government Consolidation. In a nutshell, the cost of amalgamation.
The report was prepared by officials in the provincial municipal affairs department, no doubt in answer to criticisms of the first report that neglected to delve into the cost of amalgamation.
It is based on the Stabler/Olfert report in that it adopts their suggestion for a province with 17 rural municipal districts. These would be made up of existing rural municipalities, towns, villages and resort villages with populations less than 1,800.
There would also be 12 cities and 24 municipalities with populations of 1,800 and over, for a provincial total of 53 municipalities.
The report says that, had municipalities amalgamated in 1998, $28.9 million would have been saved.
To use the Eston area as an example, the report foresees a head office with 26 employees, a council with one head earning $25,000 per year and eight councillors each earning $8,000.
The district population would be about 16,000 and each councillor would represent about 2,000 people.
The nub of the report is to be found on the second last page: It would allow the government to shift “a number of public programs and services now delivered by the province” to what the report sees as “larger, stronger, more capable municipal districts.”
In a word, downloading.
It should not be lost on anyone that this report was released while the rural and urban municipal associations are in negotiations with the provincial government over amalgamation. Presumably, this report is the government’s stance.
Municipalities had better be ready: amalgamation and downloading are coming.
