Perhaps after the provincial election a push can be made for amalgamation. I can't see anyone daring to mention it prior to or during an election.

The province, towns and cities desperately need to get this done on the Northeast Avalon for both financial and planning purposes.

Small mindededness, NIMBYism, no vision - all these plagues to progress have got to go.

Not that I have any vested interest in how municipalities are governed but I think the current system of Town Councils in ever little nook and cranny has to be inefficient. I would like to see a county system implemented whereby existing communities can still maintain their identity within a broader area. No more of this foolish naming of towns such as Portugal Cove – St. Phillips or my favorite, New-wes-valley.

I could see St. John’s and Mount Pearl as one city (St. Mount John’s or Pearl John’s or Pearl Jam…or something) with the rest of the NE Avalon as one or two counties. Drawing the exact border may be a bit tricky with Paradise very close to St. John’s but I’m sure there are legitimate criteria such as water and sewer infrastructure that might help define it a bit better.

I would not favor a “super city” concept where there are clearly rural/urban components. Being a “townie”, I’d like to see the City of St. John’s (including Mt. Pearl) maintain a primarily urban landscape. If you have a goat or a hen on your property, you live in the “country”…sorry “Southside goats”, you have to move…lol.

Entire Northeast Avalon? No. Mount Pearl and Paradise? Yes.

If nothing else to tackle and improve transit.

I would start with those also. It would be interesting to see a report outlining the benefit from a fiscal standpoint of eliminating councils and other overlapping departments within the city and two towns.

huh...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfou...ange-1.3185174

Paradise is an example of everything NOT to do with a municipality. I haven't followed much of what's gone on there since leaving NL about five years ago. But, I seem to recall that the Junior/High School students were bused to CBS. They have no full time fire department, no public transit. There should be more criteria for city status outside of just population. If there is any change, it should be the annexation of the ugly sprawl into being a part of the city of St. John's.

For the longest time they seemed to be obsessed with the "fastest growing municipality in Atlantic Canada" title and forgot about anything else. They were completely focused on sticking in subdivisions wherever they could. They are almost completely reliant on surrounding municipalities for providing most basic things that a City is supposed to provide. It's only within the last month or so they got a proper supermarket.

It's not a very nice looking town either in my opinion.

I actually lived in Paradise when I was a kid from 1980-1991 and back then it was an escape from St. John's that provided rural living next to an urban center. The town actually looked nice with a ton of green space and little getaways in the woods around Adams and Neil's pond. Unfortunately they've mowed down all the trees and allowed developers to take over cramming as many cookie cutter houses into a space as possible, it's sad really.

http://www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?...nts=1&latest=1

Am I missing something here? Doesn't CBS have a municipal enforcement that enforce by-laws? They are a town, why can't Paradise do the same?

I imagine they can. We have municipal enforcement officers in Stephenville, I don't see why Paradise couldn't have the same.

I agree...partly. Paradise was nice area to live in the 90's. Unfortunately in the early 2000's it started developing subdivisions almost everywhere it could and effectively doubled it's population in a 10-12 year period without much thought put into traffic/amenities. Alot of the population growth in metro over the last 10 years has been absorbed by Paradise.

I think in the last few years in particular it has improved somewhat by investing in wider roads, industrial park, more schools (provincial gov issue), fire station, rec center/double ice surface and now there a couple of supermarkets as well as increased commercial areas.

That being said would I call it a "city"? No. It's close enough to St. John's it is effectively part of the metro. Same with Mt. Pearl.

Councillors(aka politicians) in Paradise want to be a city for the same reason Mt. Pearl has always refused amalgamation. They want to maintain and legitimize their jobs.

Let me know if I'm way off base here...

Shorter version: Municipalities have limited power to enact regulations, cities have broader power. This broader power is probably what Mr. Hussey refers to when he mentions by-laws, but to my eye the term "regulation" and "by-law" are often used interchangeably in the province (all the regulations listed on the St. John's website are actually by-laws http://www.stjohns.ca/city-hall/abou...nd-regulations ). Paradise likely has similar power to enact and enforce regulations as CBS. If they don't have municipal enforcement officers, it's probably because they don't want to pay for them

Longer version: Municipalities are delegated limited power to self-regulate. Nearly all municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador are controlled by the Municipalities Act of 1999 ( http://www.assembly.nl.ca/legislatio...atutes/m24.htm ). Three municipalities are controlled by separate acts: the City of St. John's Act ( http://www.assembly.nl.ca/legislatio...atutes/c17.htm ), the City of Mount Pearl Act ( http://www.assembly.nl.ca/legislatio...atutes/c16.htm ), and the City of Corner Brook Act ( http://www.assembly.nl.ca/legislatio...atutes/c15.htm ).

The City of St. John's Act §29, in summary, broadly gives Council the power to make rules, regulations, and by-laws for the purpose performing its duties. Such broad language is not found in the Municipalities Act. Instead, the Municipalities Act specifies narrow areas for Council's self-regulation (e.g. Municipalities Act §202 for business improvement area regulation and §414 for various municipal service regulation). However, just because a municipality is granted city status does not mean it enjoys the broad autonomy of St. John's. Glossing over the Corner Brook and Mount Pearl Acts, the delegated powers seem more limited than St. John's (no broad mention of power to make by-laws).

Also, the legal difference between a "by-law" and a "regulation" escapes me. I think of by-laws as being broader in scope and regulations narrower in scope, but both are still municipal self-regulation delegated by the provincial government.

Absolutely!~

Well past time.

Old af thread but I'd be really interesting if a poll was done and we could see the skew of votes for and against sorted by age group.

I'd wager 40 and under would vote for regional amalg and 41+ would be majority against it.

Not sure if I previously mentioned it here, but I did a research paper on this topic for all of NL a few years ago. I had thought the best approach would be to force municipalities to amalgamate so that'd we'd have regional municipalities. However, from looking at previous reports done by the government - and other groups - and approaches in other provinces I found that it would make more sense to create regional governments without amalgamating all the municipalities within the region.

So municipalities could keep their autonomy if they wish but they would fall under a regional government that would be responsible for certain services.

So creating another layer of administration between municipalities and the province, like in BC?

Maybe similar to BC and also how Ontario is structured.

So we'd have regional governments throughout the province made up of however many municipalities, this would also require all communities becoming incorporated as a town or city. These regional municipalities would have defined responsibilities, probably similar to the responsibilities the city of St. John's has.

What would be the ideal populations or size of these regional districts? It seems like provincial electoral districts might be slightly too large for this purpose.

I never thought that much about it. It might make more sense to base it on geography, rather than population.

Any move on this or is it dead? And the regional plan _still_ has not materialized some 7 years later.

Forced amalgamation was supposed to be the next step should it fall through but we haven't even gotten that far yet.