If you’re a Pelham, Ont., resident and a pothole the size of Texas has just destroyed the suspension of your car, don’t expect to be able to vent about it to Bob Hildebrandt if it’s Sunday morning.

“I go to church Sunday morning so I’m not taking calls,” the Pelham town councillor says.

But pretty much any other time of the week, including evenings and Saturdays, Hildebrandt is a go-to guy for residents of the Niagara Region town eager to get help on any number of issues.

“They call me about everything,” said Hildebrandt. “They call me about snowplows, they call me about potholes.”

Hildebrandt takes pride in the fact his home phone number is listed on the town’s website.

“I want people to have ready access to me,” he said.

Dave Siegel, a retired Brock University political science professor, wonders if that kind of accessibility could become more rare in Niagara if some of the city’s 12 towns and cities end up being amalgamated or if the number of municipal councillors at towns or cities and regional government is reduced.

Talk of amalgamation caused stir in Niagara

Former Regional Chair Bob Gale sparked debate recently when he first said he wanted the current dozen municipalities amalgamated into either one big city or four cities, citing what he said have been unsustainable property tax hikes in recent years at the Region. 

Gale later changed tack and wrote to Ontario’s municipal affairs minister, Rob Flack, to suggest the 32-member regional council be slashed to just 13 members comprising the 12 mayors and a chair, and half the 12 cities and towns have local council seats cut.

Gale has since resigned, but the issue of amalgamation or cutting council sizes still looms over Niagara given Premier Rob Ford’s assertion that Niagara’s 126 municipal politicians is far too many.

Ford said at a news conference on Wednesday that he preferred having the region’s mayors pick some sort of governance model with fewer politicians, but said that’s like asking turkeys to vote in favour of Thanksgiving.

“So we’ll step in and streamline it and make sure there’s an efficient government running it because it’s all about protecting the taxpayers’ money,” he said.

Siegel said mashing together municipalities or slashing existing council sizes could make it more difficult for residents to have local councillors willing to find time for them.

“[Councillors are] just not going to have the bandwidth to deal with two or three times more residents,” he said.

Local councillor’s quick response appreciated

For Fort Erie, Ont., resident Tracey Calder Rosettani, losing the connection with local councillors willing to head out to meet residents on weekends or take calls on evenings would be a real shame.

When she’s come up against issues she needed help with, Calder Rosettani said all it takes is a quick call to her ward councillor, Darren Flagg.

“I can call Darren and he can be there in a few minutes,” she said. 

Flagg runs two funeral homes and travels to rinks across southern Ontario as supervisor of referees with the Ontario Hockey Association, but somehow finds the time to respond to calls from residents as soon as humanly possible. It’s not uncommon for folks to simply show up at his funeral homes to chat him up on issues.

“It could be a ditch that hasn’t been cut or a sidewalk that hasn’t been plowed,” Flagg said. 

“When I take time on a Saturday to go out to someone’s house to walk through their backyard because they have an issue with drainage…they feel valued,” he said. 

“That’s part of what I signed up for…that this would be a job 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Calder Rosettani wonders if cutting the number of elected officials in Niagara would take something away from the small-town feel of where she lives.

“How can we have a councillor who lives 25 minutes away from here know what our needs are here?” she asked. “They probably wouldn’t care about us.”