Sudbury in no-win situation

Sudbury’s dismal finish in a national poll rating municipal services is, in part, a result of the failed expectations raised by amalgamation, according to a Laurentian University professor.

Dr. Bob Segsworth, who heads the university’s political science department, said when the province forced municipalities to merge in 2001, expectations were that it would save money and lead to more lean local government.

While that may have been true in densely populated southern Ontario, the wide-open spaces of the north meant that service levels would be uneven in parts of the city —for example, fire and police services. And maintaining roads and conducting snowplowing across Greater Sudbury would be costly and uneven.

“Virtually every year since amalgamation, taxes have gone up higher than the rate of inflation,” he said. “So in real terms, the cost of living in Greater Sudbury continues to increase.”

Worse, many people in the city paying those higher taxes are paying for services they don’t receive — and won’t receive for the foreseeable future.

“Service levels vary greatly depending where you live,” Segsworth said. “We may be one of the 30 largest cities, but from a population density perspective, we are, in fact, rural. In terms of land area, we’re the second biggest city in Canada and one of the largest in North America, yet we have a population of roughly 160,000.”

That means many residents live in scarcely populated rural areas, and don’t have, for example, full-time firefighters or a permanent police presence.

They pay comparable taxes to people living downtown, which means they’re going to feel cheated, Segsworth said. Combined with the city’s $500-million infrastructure deficit — which is the amount of road and other work that needs to be done but the city can’t afford — and you have a situation where residents are going to be chronically unhappy.

In the poll, conducted by Forum Research Inc., only six per cent of respondents said they were very satisfied with the services they receive from the city. By comparison, in Quebec City, which topped the survey in most categories, 52 per cent of residents said they were very satisfied.

Last year, Greater Sudbury came in second last, when 12 per cent of respondents said they were very happy. Residents in most cities gave their services a grade around 20-25 per cent. This year, Halifax came in second last at 13 per cent.

Unhappiness was most pronounced in areas where service levels vary the most, including fire services, policing, snowplowing, sports complexes, as well as overall tax levels.

While local controversies do play a part, Segsworth rejected the idea that it was driving the unhappiness. They may not help, he said, but tend to aggravate the situation rather than cause it.

“Where did Toronto finish?” he asked. “Have you heard of any scandals happening there?”

Toronto, where Mayor Rob Ford has fought high-profile battles with city council and the media on everything from closing public libraries to banning plastic bags, finished with a rating of 20 per cent.

Segsworth said the problems run deeper, although the scandals may worsen an already negative perception residents have of their local government.

“There is a huge public relations and communications issue out there. And it’s going to take a long time to turn it around — and I’m not sure you can turn it around, because of the nature of the problem.”

Take roads, for example, both maintaining them year-round and plowing them in winter. Segsworth said there’s no way to deal with roads in a way that most people will be happy with without raising taxes through the roof.

“If you took all the roads in Greater Sudbury and laid them straight, you could drive all the way to Atlanta,” he said. “That’s an enormous amount of roadwork to look after and maintain … If you’re someone who lives in what used to be Capreol, but is now part of Greater Sudbury, why should you settle for less services than someone who lives in the old City of Sudbury? The push is always going to be to raise the service levels to the higher levels.

“But if you want professional firefighters, guess what? It costs money to have that as opposed to the volunteer services.”

He said most of the unhappiness tends to be directed towards the mayor’s office, where an incumbent hasn’t been re-elected since Jim Gordon, the first mayor of Greater Sudbury, stepped down in 2003. Yet most city councillors have been re-elected, some running unopposed.

“The mayor is, as Rob Ford is discovering in Toronto, one vote at council,” Segsworth said. “They may have agenda-setting roles and other things they can do, but unless they’re prepared to develop strong working relationships with council, their agendas are going to get stalled or shot down.”

If you look at the hard data when it comes to measuring how well the city does in delivering services, Segsworth said Greater Sudbury fares quite well. But most residents aren’t aware of how well we do in broader comparisons to other towns and cities.

“So part of the problem (is that) the city does a lousy job of communicating,” he said. “I think the quality of life in Sudbury is quite impressive, frankly, but we’re stuck with the history we’ve got, and we’re stuck with the decisions that were made by people at Queen’s Park who don’t understand this part of the world. They didn’t ask us if we wanted (amalgamation).

“The evidence is absolutely clear with these amalgamations: costs go up. There aren’t any savings to be had ... We were the only municipality in northern Ontario that got hammered so badly by amalgamation.”

Longer-term, without a surge in population to fill in the less inhabited areas of Greater Sudbury, he said the city is in an almost impossible position of trying to meet the demands of residents want equal services, but not higher taxes.

“If you want urban services, and that seems to be the argument, how do you deliver them when we’re (largely) a rural municipality? Unless the population increases dramatically, people will have to plan on spending a lot more in taxes if they want the same services.”

Posted by Arron Pickard