The Warden of Grey County says it’s inevitable that the county will evolve into a single tier municipality.
Arlene Wright admits she’ll no longer be involved in politics when it does happen, but she believes it will happen at some point in the future.
Wright says it will simply be too difficult and expensive for individual municipalities within the county to survive on their own.
Wright and County CAO Lance Thurston visited Georgian Bluffs council on Wednesday night as part of their regular visits to the lower-tier municipalities — bringing greetings from the upper tier and listening to concerns.
Thurston told council of a number of instances where single-tier municipalities are already in place — Chatham-Kent, Brant County and Prince Edward County, to name a few.
If and when the process begins, County staff would be asked by councillors to come up with a report looking at the possibilities.
Once that report is presented, council would make the decision of whether or not to go ahead.
Thurston says this isn’t the kind of thing that should happen unless there is a clear reason why it would make sense — probably from a financial standpoint.
In the end, the change would only happen if council agreed by a two-thirds majority.
Wright says she knows that some people would resist the move to a single-tier municipality.
She notes that previous municipal amalgamations at the turn of the century were also contentious.
But Wright also says she knows many county councillors are already talking about the possibilities, even if discussions have not yet been formalized.
Georgian Bluffs Deputy Mayor Dwight Burley — who chaired Wednesday’s meeting in the absence of Mayor Alan Barfoot — agrees that councillors have talked about the idea amongst themselves.
