The Town of Nipawin is bringing a motion to the floor at the upcoming SUMA convention. (File Photo/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

Is One Better Than Two?

Northeast community looking to spark discussion on amalgamation at SUMA convention

Jan 31, 2020 | 5:31 PM

The Town of Nipawin is looking to get a discussion going about further cooperation between local governments.

The town is bringing a motion to the floor of the upcoming Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) convention in Regina. If passed the motion would empower SUMA to explore the possibility of merging with the Saskatchewan Rural Municipalities Association (SARM).

Nipawin Mayor Rennie Harper explained the town is bringing the motion forward as the provincial government has urged urban and rural municipalities to work together as much as possible. Harper said her town is involved in a number of collaborative projects with other municipal governments. These projects have included a regional landfill and mutual aid agreements.

The mayor said in her experience urban and rural governments get conflicting information from the provincial government.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were in the same room hearing the same messages from ministers and ministries,” she said.

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When compared with the rest of the country, Saskatchewan has a large number of municipal governments. Harper said Manitoba with a population of 1.3 million has 137 municipalities, meanwhile Saskatchewan with a population of nearly 1.2 million people has 749 municipal governments.

“There’s an awful lot of local government in Saskatchewan,” Barry Elliot, chief administrative officer for the Town of Nipawin said.

Elliot echoed many of the mayor’s sentiments about the importance of local governments getting the same information. He added bringing everyone together could help when local governments need to lobby the province.

“There’s an awful lot of clout there for that table to come forward to the province,” he said.

Harper said they have not talked about the motion with their RM neighbours about the resolution, but she feels there is support for it. She stressed the importance of exploring possible alternative ways of doing things.

“We can’t stay stagnant, we have to change the way we do business and unless we try something, we don’t know that something different won’t work,” she said.

SARM President Ray Orb declined to comment on the SUMA motion specifically. However, he said if a similar motion was brought to the floor at the SARM convention, he doesn’t believe it would be successful.

“I don’t believe that our members would want us to amalgamate with an urban association,” he said.

Orb explained while SARM has a good working relationship with SUMA and the two work together on a number of initiatives, there are areas the two organizations interests diverge. In particular Orb said RM’s have major interests in agriculture and the resource sector, and are important parts of the local tax base. Orb added urban governments do not have these same specific concerns.

The SARM president said his organizations preference is to have a good working relationship with SUMA. He said to move to a single organization, SARM would need a push from the membership.

“I think we would need a pretty strong mandate from our members to do that,” he said.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn