GREENMOUNT-MONTROSE, P.E.I. - Dave Pizio is not putting much stock into his new title of mayor of the Rural Municipality of Greenmount-Montrose.
He says chairman of the Greenmont-Montrose Community Improvement Committee (CIC) suited him just fine.
The title change came about as a result of Prince Edward Island’s new Municipal Government Act, which took effect just before Christmas. That new act is something Pizio, on behalf of six small municipalities in West Prince, had vehemently opposed.
“As far as I’m concerned, this was a backdoor method to push for amalgamation without being, supposedly, the bad person,” he said, suggesting the new provisions will result in new costs being passed on to residents of small municipalities without residents seeing any benefits.
One of the first orders of business is to draft a council and committee remuneration bylaw. Pizio notes his council has always operated on a volunteer basis, and the administrator was paid a $300 annual honorarium. The community of 254 residents must also prepare for an all-day municipal election next fall, replacing the traditional election meeting.
They will be required to have at least six meetings a year.
“You know how many meetings we’ve had a year? One,” said Pizio, “unless it is an election year and then we have two.”
P.E.I.’s new Municipal Government Act replaces the former Municipalities Act, Charlottetown Area Municipalities Act and City of Summerside Act. Key areas of change relate to:
- new structure and service requirements
- how elections are held
- council composition and conduct
- administrative expectations
- accessing municipal information and privacy protection
- areas of municipal jurisdiction
- powers of the minister responsible
- financial matters
Going forward, there will be a need for an audit, but for the coming year a review engagement will suffice. Pizio doesn’t know what that will cost but pointed out it cost Greenmount-Montrose nothing to submit its annual budget previously.
But Pizio vows the municipality he chairs will abide by the new legislation for as long as it is a municipality.
That timeline is up for discussion.
“Let’s be realistic here. I am not going to go to a resident and say, ‘I’m going to double or triple your municipal taxes, strictly for administrative purposes.’ I cannot sell that to people. I am not going to.”
He insists the MGA “has created a new bureaucracy level that is financially crippling small communities for no return of the investment other than additional administrative services.”
On behalf of Greenmount-Montrose, Tignish Shore, Miminegash, St. Louis, St. Felix and Northport, Pizio has held public information sessions and appeared before a Legislative Standing Committee to outline concerns about the impact the MGA would have on small municipalities.
Bruce MacDougall, president of the Federation of P.E.I. Municipalities, welcomes the new act pointing out the basis of the one it replaces was drafted in the 1800s.
“This MGA, there’s a lot of change in it. It’s an MGA for today,” said MacDougall. “We’ve come ahead a long ways.”
But MacDougall concedes the MGA is probably not so much geared towards smaller municipalities.
“The fact that there are 73 municipalities still in this province is something we have to get over because it is not really functional,” he maintained. “There has to be regionalization of some kind – coming together, sharing of services.”
“How is it we’re not viable now?” Pizio asks.
He’s not buying that annexation or amalgamation will make them viable.
Of the 59 former CICs, now known as Rural Municipalities, only 28 are members of the FPEIM. None of the six communities on whose behalf Pizio speaks concerning the MGA are members of the federation.
While hopeful that the act can be amended, Pizio draws little comfort from Communities, Land and Environment Minister Robert Mitchell’s assurance that certain sections of the act can be relaxed.
“My statement to that is, ‘If you, as a minister, are stating right now that you would relax certain rules and regulations, why are they in there? You’re not going to be the minister forever, and then the next one that comes in, because it’s there, that is law, and that is the end of it.’”
