This is the seventh of an eight-part series examining the amalgamation that reconfigured Wellington County from 21 municipalities to seven in the late 1990s.
The Township of Mapleton was created with the amalgamation of the Township of Peel and the Village of Drayton, which had already joined, and the Township of Maryborough, on Jan. 1, 1999.
But the story of the new municipality actually begins long before that.
John Green’s political experience includes over 30 years in municipal government. He has been Wellington County warden three times, is a former Mayor of Mapleton and is currently county councillor for Mapleton.
Immediately before amalgamation he was Drayton’s reeve and he took the county council post following amalgamation. He’s been a proponent of amalgamation for a long time, dating back to the early 90s, when a joint commission considered, then abandoned, the idea of an amalgamation involving the City of Guelph.
His advocacy of the idea continued through the latter part of the decade, when it became clear the provincial government of the day was intent on cutting funding to municipalities, while downloading the cost of many services.
“A lot of the road grants and things we used to get were being eliminated. Quite frankly the rural municipalities couldn’t have afforded it,” Green said, adding, “The arenas and recreation facilities and the cost of roads were not sustainable if there was no money coming from the government.”
By joining together, Green says, municipalities had a chance of maintaining services, although they wouldn’t be able to accomplish as much at once as they could on the previous grant-supported system. Today, he notes, projects need to be scheduled and spread out to keep within budget.
Green says the fact Drayton and Peel were used to working together on fire and recreation services helped smooth the amalgamation process.
Maryborough, however, was initially a reluctant partner, until Wellington County began to act on amalgamation by hiring Harry Kitchen and Doug Armstrong to create a report on the best way to reduce the number of municipalities.
“Maryborough didn’t like amalgamation. They wanted nothing to do with it. But when things at the county started to happen, with everyone else amalgamating, they probably felt like an island out there,” said Green.
With Drayton and Peel amalgamating in 1998, Maryborough joined the process and became part of Mapleton (the name is an combination of the three former municipality names) in 1999.
In the late ‘90s current Mapleton Mayor Bruce Whale had not yet entered municipal politics. However, from his vantage point as a Peel Township dairy farmer, he saw amalgamation as inevitable.
“I didn’t think the rural municipalities, when I looked what was coming, and looked at the reserves and what they had to do for roads and buildings, I didn’t think the rural municipalities could do it without amalgamation,” said Whale.
Whale noted that initially, the reserves each municipality brought into the union were kept separate.
“We were very careful to use the reserves from Peel Township in Peel and the reserves from Drayton in Drayton and so on,” said Whale, noting, “we just used up a lot of those reserves two or three years ago.”
Mapleton CAO/clerk Patty Sinnamon was an administrative assistant with the Village of Drayton prior to amalgamation, a position she continued to hold after the first amalgamation between Drayton and Peel. She became deputy clerk when Mapleton was formed, later moving up to her current position.
She recalls some uncertainty among the staff when amalgamation talk first began.
“There were a lot of unanswered questions until they actually started working at it and putting this thing together.”
In the end, she said, staffing in Mapleton came together fairly smoothly, pointing out that each of the former municipalities had only two office staff members, so there wasn’t a great deal of job loss. While there were two road superintendents between the three municipalities, one retired, leaving that position filled by attrition.
All together, Mapleton had 16 full-time employees at amalgamation, a number that has grown to 25 today.
Both Whale and Sinnamon point to increased regulatory and reporting requirements from the province as a big part of the reason why the amalgamated community needs more staff.
“A lot has changed,” said Sinnamon. “You can’t just say to the province that you’re not going to report and you’re not going to look for opportunities.”
Sinnamon feels the municipality has been very successful in “creating partnerships with the community.
“You have to work at those partnerships and you have to work at building those relationships.” There was also a transition period, as staff adjusted to working on a broader scale, said Sinnamon.
“You can see the transition that’s been happening in the people who worked in the old townships systems for years and had to adjust from being responsible for just one township to looking at larger responsibilities over the whole municipality, and that took a bit of growing into,” she explained.
Economic development is another area the amalgamated municipality expends more resources on than the former municipalities did.
“We’re having to do more and more in terms of economic development and the type of things you do to support local businesses and that’s something that had never really been considered by the rural municipalities before,” Sinnamon notes.
One unavoidable consequences of the combined amalgamation and downloading has been an increase in municipal debt.
Sinnamon said the three former municipalities were “basically debt free,” at amalgamation. Today, the township has a debt load of about $3.5 million, due to projects such as the new medical centre in Drayton, the sewage plant and other major projects.
With many other Wellington municipalities carrying higher debt totals, Sinnamon said, “I think we’ve done pretty well.”
The role of municipal fire departments has also expanded in the time since amalgamation, requiring more, and better trained, firefighters.
“The demands that are now placed on our fire departments is probably one of the biggest challenges. We used to be basically a fire service. Now, they respond to road accidents and all the emergency medical service calls as well. It’s very demanding for a service that basically relies on volunteers,” said Whale.
“The training requirements are astronomical,” added Sinnamon, noting that training sessions for firefighters once held monthly are now required on a weekly basis.
“They expected them to be trained to the same level as full-time firefighters,” she commented.
With the passage of time, Green feels people have become more comfortable with the new municipal structure.
“I think people are generally accepting of it,” Green said. However, he added, “There’s still some people who don’t see the logic of it.”
Green feels some of the disappointment surrounding amalgamation from the public stems from the “mistaken” idea provided in “a sales pitch” that amalgamation would save money.
“I argued at the time that it wouldn’t save money. It couldn’t, because costs continued to go up,” he said.
However, Green added, joining forces with neighbours allowed municipalities to continue providing services, utilizing the advantage of a larger pool of money to work with.
All things considered, Whale feels amalgamation has been a positive move for the three former municipalities that now make up Mapleton.
“I think it’s a good thing and I think it had to happen. And, I’m not sure we’re finished yet with it because of all the downloading that continues to take place,” he stated.
Noting that he is one of the few active politicians in the county remaining from the pre-amalgamation days, Green feels that most members of current council have no problem working under the current system.
“The reality is, the councilors that are dealing with it now, really don’t know what it was like in the old days, so the acceptance is fairly high,” said Green.
“In another 10 years no one will even remember it,” he added.
