Bishop's Falls Mayor, Jody Fancey is quoted as saying that a merger between Bishop's Falls and the larger Grand Falls - Windsor could happen with the help of the Provincial Government. Mayor Fancey is well aware of the work of the CCRC as she has been on the Advisory Committee for 2 years and she is also aware that as I have mentioned the current trend toward amalgamations is driven by necessity and is not likely to change anytime soon. The other factor in play here is that the province currently has an appetite to throw some money at these mergers ( $3million + for Roddickton-Bide Arm) but that's not likely to continue forever.
The basic fact remains that we have 281 municipalities and about 500,000 people. Just over 75% of those have less then 1000 people and many have less then 100. From an administrative standpoint that doesn't make a lot of sense. It really time we started examining different forms of local government, whatever they might be because what we currently have just isn't sustainable.
This also in from our Media Monitoring service:
TOWNS LOOK FOR AMALGAMATION: Roddickton and Bide Arm did it, Port aux Choix, Port Saunders and Hawk' s Bay are looking seriously at it. Now three more towns on the Northern Peninsula are considering amalgamation. ["Steve Kerry", Mayor of Daniel's Harbour; Brenda Biggin(sp?)", Mayor of Parson's Pond; "Gerry Bennett", Mayor of St. Paul's]
AIRED: 07:21 AM DURATION: 09:00 REPORTER: DOROTHY KING/BRIAN MCHUGH
That makes nearly half a dozen locations discussing the a-word!
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