Regional Chair calling for more services to be handled by the region

Amalgamation was a divisive topic Thursday during a meeting for the province’s Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy. The meeting was held downtown Kitchener to discuss regional governance.

Six out of the seven local mayors announced a plan to keep the current two-tier government. However, they said they wanted to give all housing decisions to cities and towns.

“Any changes that need to be made or should be considered for the governance model should be about our residents, their service, the cost effectiveness and the affordability of those services,” said Regional Chair, Karen Redman in an interview on The Mike Farwell Show Friday morning.

Redman wants services for things like roadways, transit, wastewater, and fire to be allocated to the region to handle to make things more efficient.

“I do believe that uploading those aspects at a regional level would provide a consistent service no matter what corner of the region they’re in,” said Redman.

“We can do better.”

The region is expected to grow from the current 650,000 to one million people by 2050.

Redman said she has talked to community members who say they are more concerned about having more services than having a one-tier government.

“This is an old chestnut, this conversation has been going on almost as long as the region has been here,” said Redman.

“We need that coordinated planning to go forward as well as employment land because people come here and they want to have jobs and they want good jobs, so all of that is possible but we need that coordination.”

Redman added that Waterloo Region has more politicians than the City of Toronto currently.

More consistency in decision making for services would happen if those services were given to the region, said Redman.

“I think of Highway 24 in Cambridge and there’s sections that are regional, there’s sections that are city and sections that are controlled by the MTO so that kind of clarity would be really helpful.”

Redman sad that cross-border fighting between municipalities has stalled some deals on the table for things like housing developments.