KEY POINTS:
Auckland does not need to suffer the same "lousy marriage" that occurred with municipal amalgamation in Toronto, says a former chief planner of Canada's largest city.
Paul Bedford said amalgamation could work if it was well planned and avoided the mistakes of Toronto, where seven municipal bodies were rolled into a mega-city in 1998.
Mr Bedford is in Auckland this week giving a series of presentations on planning and amalgamation as a guest of the Auckland City Council.
Speaking at Waitakere City Council yesterday, Mr Bedford said he was comforted to hear there was a Royal Commission of Inquiry appointed to find solutions to Auckland's governance.
Toronto's amalgamation had been imposed by the Ontario provincial government for political purposes, he said. The Royal Commission is travelling to Toronto in October. It is visiting Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and London on the same trip and making a separate trip to Brisbane and Melbourne next month.
Toronto has come up in submissions to the commission and at public hearings as a bad apple, particularly in regard to cost savings.
Creating a mega-city of 2.6 million people cost C$275 million ($365 million) and was predicted to bring savings of C$300 million a year. Eight years later a report found the reforms generated few, if any, savings.
Mr Bedford said amalgamation had not saved a penny. For the first time in 10 years, the city had balanced the books without requiring assistance from the provincial government.
A decision by the provincial government to do a swap so it funded schools and the city funded transport and social housing had not been revenue neutral as planned.
Mr Bedford said people were not happy with how the amalgamation had played out. They were paying more for fewer services and were unable to interact with the "huge beast" of municipal government.
The city had 50,000 staff, including 7000 police officers. When it came to wage parity during amalgamation "the cream rose to the top".
Mr Bedford, who was the first chief planner for the mega-city, said amalgamation did lead to a single plan for the wider Toronto region of 7.5 million people being drawn up in just three years.
Now retired, Mr Bedford is the only non-politician on a regional board putting together a C$90 billion transport plan for greater Toronto.
Among the proposals to raise C$8 billion a year to fund the plan are a tax of C20c a litre on petrol, a motorway road toll of C10c a kilometre, a C$1 daily charge for every non-residential parking space, a 1 per cent regional sales tax and government grants.
Mr Bedford said any governance model could work, but it was critical to think and act like a region, especially on transport matters.
"I always say transit is the glue that holds the thing together."
