'Unfair and undemocratic LSD model' should be scrapped

Modernizing New Brunswick’s local governance structure is going to take leadership from the provincial government.

Whatever party that forms the next provincial government is going to have to take some calculated risks and will have to cash in some political capital. 

But making such changes will bring about far more transparency in local decision making, taxation fairness and in the end, a much more sustainable municipal system for the entire province. 

It’s worth the risk. 

Without leadership from the provincial government, meaningful reform will take decades, resulting in increased costs and increased issues of fairness between urban, semi-urban and rural New Brunswick.

It is unfair and unrealistic to depend on community volunteers to lead this kind of change in many of New Brunswick’s current local service districts.

I was on the front lines of local governance reform for more than two years. As a member of the local service district of Rusagonis-Waasis, I was part of a project that proposed incorporating our local service district into a rural community. 

Advantages to governance reform

There are several advantages to moving towards a rural community. For the residents, it offered accountable local governance in way that was both affordable and scalable.

A rural community would provide residents with real input into the future growth of the community and could grow to meet the communities changing needs.

It would also have provided the community with access to funds from the provincial and federal government that were either difficult to access as an unincorporated area or simply inaccessible either on paper or in reality. 

Becoming a rural community would have provided to residents of Rusagonis-Waasis the ability to have a real say future growth. And make no mistake, it’s a growing community. 

Strategically located between Oromocto and Fredericton, it has experienced double-digit growth in its tax base for the last five years. In a province experiencing a demographic decline, its population grew by more than 20 per cent between 2007 and 2012.

As part of a lengthy government-mandated process, a community-driven volunteer committee assisted in developing a feasibility study that showed a modest and affordable model for the rural community with a small mayor and council was financially viable and would offer a range of benefits. 

While Rusagonis-Waasis, with its population in excess of 3,300 and a tax base in excess of $245 million, could viably form its own municipality, not every LSD in the province has the same capacity.

That’s why many LSDs, particularly in northern New Brunswick, have banded together either with other LSDs or in combination with local villages and towns.

Unfortunately, the Rusagonis-Waasis rural community project never went to a vote.

There are a few reasons for that.

Lack of interest hindered project

The most important being a general lack of interest in the community. The vast majority of residents simply weren’t interested in the issue, as evidenced by extremely low response rates to surveys and low attendance at community meetings. 

And from a certain point of view, that makes sense. 

With a tax rate nearly 40 per cent lower than Fredericton and half of that of Saint John, local residents were content with the status quo. 

Overall there was no overwhelming concern about the rapid rate of development, which in all fairness also resulted in the low tax rate and that they were arguably satisfied with services, such as garbage collection, policing and fire protection, which were contracted and managed by the provincial government. 

But a lack of interest wasn’t the only reason the project didn’t proceed. 

Those who were in favour of the idea faced an uphill battle trying to convince other residents who feared that those who had lived in the community for generations would somehow lose influence in a new municipality with an elected mayor and council. 

There were also others who were vocally opposed to the idea who either had business interests within the community or had friends or family with such interests. Others opposed it simply because of the party in power at the time.

Such is the reality of politics in New Brunswick.

Communities in northern New Brunswick have had more success with the current approach towards creating rural municipalities than those in the southern part of the province.

I believe is likely in part due to a greater level of political activism by New Brunswick’s francophone communities and a recognition that such efforts have helped advance their communities.

Meanwhile, communities in southern New Brunswick such as those surrounding Sussex as well as other such as Lincoln and Rusagonis-Waasis, have struggled.

Exhausting and divisive process

Pushing for local governance reform in a community that’s struggling to adjust to rapid change can be emotionally exhausting and divisive.

During our project, proponents often faced a barrage of online and in-person criticism from those distrustful of any type of change or who believed incorporation was just a tax grab.

Some long-term friendships within the community were severed over the idea while my family had to deal with being told in person at our home that we should move out of the community if we were unhappy with the status quo.

Others were told that because they were not part of the families that had been in the community for generations that their ideas weren’t welcome.

These are the kinds of burdens volunteers in many communities can face when advocating for local governance reform.

For Rusagonis-Waasis, after a difficult summer campaign of community meetings and door to door visits, the decision was made to shelve the project.

Advancing the idea of forming a rural community in what would have been a brutal fall campaign was simply unpalatable to volunteers who were exhausted in the effort to get things as far as they were with the project. 

A new LSD advisory committee was formed this past spring and tackled other issues.

The truth is, Rusagonis-Waasis, like nearby Lincoln, on one hand unfairly benefits from dramatically lower tax rates than nearby municipalities while enjoying many of the services in those communities.

And on the other hand, it faces increasing user fees on things such as hockey registrations as those same municipalities begin to push back against the fiscal unfairness, putting ever increasing burdens on families in our area who want their children to be able to use facilities in those communities.

Rusagonis-Waasis, like Lincoln, has the fiscal capacity to stand on its own feet and manage local affairs. That’s already been proven. In fact, communities, such as Rusagonis-Waasis and Lincoln, arguably have a more solid fiscal footing than many existing municipalities. 

Citizens should be given a chance to vote

While not all LSDs are as a fortunate, those that are either rapidly urbanizing or that have largely become suburban, should be presented with a simple choice by the province in a plebiscite. 

The choice should be to either form a rural community within their existing boundaries or to be split up amongst nearby municipalities as the province sees fit, either way the result would result in more say for residents over local matters.

Disbanding the local service district model will result in greater accountability for residents as well as facilitate greater fiscal transparency around taxation and services.- David Shipley

For example, Rusagonis-Waasis has over 900 children under the age of 18 and not a single park. A rural community can help change that. 

Rusagonis-Waasis’ rapid development and urbanization would also benefit from more local say into subdivision plans and layouts as well as greater efforts to preserve green space within our community for the long-term. This would also ensure environmental sustainability, particularly important given that the vast majority of homes depend on well water.

The province could also consider financial incentives to smaller LSDs to encourage voluntary mergers with other nearby communities.

Disbanding the local service district model will result in greater accountability for residents as well as facilitate greater fiscal transparency around taxation and services. It will also correct an injustice done to rural New Brunswick when counties were abolished and control over municipal matters for some communities were centralized in Fredericton.

After this provincial election, the province should divide up all LSDs among those that are financially viable on their own and those that would need to merge with another.

For the first group, referendums should be scheduled fall 2015 and communities should either be created or merged depending on voter choice, by July 2016. For the second group, options for merging with nearby communities should be proposed as well as an option to let the province decide how best to proceed.

Those communities would be in place by 2018, ahead of the next provincial election. 

There have been more than two dozen studies on reforming local governance in New Brunswick. The time has well since past for the province to act.

If the concern is that no government wants to force amalgamation in the ways that were done in the past, then provide residents with a choice.

But make the choice both realistic and forward-thinking by removing the status quo and scrapping the inefficient, unfair and undemocratic LSD model.