Municipal consolidation

Municipal consolidation, or municipal amalgamation, refers to the act of merging two or more municipalities into a single new municipality. This may be done for a variety of reasons, including urban growth, reducing the cost of local government and improving the efficiency of municipal service delivery.

Canada

In Canada, extensive programs of municipal amalgamation were undertaken by the governments of Mike Harris in Ontario and Bernard Landry in Quebec in the 1990s and 2000s.

The city of Toronto and five of its bordering municipalities were consolidated in 1998 by an act of the provincial government.[1] Three other major cities — Ottawa, Hamilton and Greater Sudbury — underwent similar amalgamations in 2001, and many smaller municipalities were amalgamated during the same era. The province of Ontario had 815 municipalities in 1996; by the time Mike Harris left office in 2002, this had been reduced to just 447.[2] Three more municipal amalgamations have taken place since 2003, reducing the number of municipalities in Ontario to 444 today.

A similar wave of municipal reorganization in Quebec took place in 2002, with 16 of the province's major cities and hundreds of smaller municipalities amalgamated into expanded municipal entities. This process was controversial, and after Landry's government was defeated by Jean Charest in the 2003 election, deamalgamation referenda were held in numerous municipalities. A total of 32 former municipalities were deamalgamated in 2004 as a result of these referenda, and were reconstituted as distinct municipal entities, but the majority of the municipalities involved in the process remain amalgamated today.

Several municipal amalgamations in New Brunswick took place in the 1990s, and the modern boundaries of Winnipeg, Manitoba were established in 1971 by amalgamating the city of Winnipeg with several of its then-suburban municipalities.

United States

In the U.S. state of New Jersey, Princeton Borough and Princeton Township became one municipality in early November 2011, supported by residents.[3]

New Jersey has passed several laws about municipal consolidation:[4]

New York passed legislation facilitating municipal consolidation in 2009.[5]

References