WATCHDOG: Inefficient and expensive - post-amalgamation Toronto is in shambles

We had eight part-time councillors who were paid just $24,000 per year. And rather than having their own staff they shared the mayor's secretary for clerical services.

The mayor was the only full-time politician, making $72,000 per year, and was responsible for both local matters and Metro Toronto as a whole.

Since most councillors had full-time jobs council meetings were held in the evening, which allowed local residents to attend.

We could speak directly to our council members regarding items on the agenda and have real influence on the outcome of a vote.

We had a small, inexpensive, and very dedicated civil service, with no labour disruptions and most civil servants lived in the community that they served.

The borough had its own fleet of dedicated equipment for managing our infrastructure, including a brand new fleet of garbage trucks specifically designed for our small streets.

We had our own medical officer of health, most notable being Dr. Sheela Basrur, who later became Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health.

We even had our own dog catcher.

Back in 1986 I began to encounter ideas being circulated by members of both the provincial Liberal and Conservative parties seeking changes to municipal governance in the province.

Strongly influenced by the radical right-wing policies of politicians such as U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the new political ideas questioned the very existence of municipal government.

Rather than viewing local governments as being essential to a community's well being, neo-conservative political theory saw them as being wasteful and inefficient.

This theory saw the amalgamation of Metro Toronto into one entity as being the means of reducing the number of local politicians, government managers and workforce, thus reducing taxes.

Despite strong warnings from both the left and right of political thought that questioned the validity of neo-conservative economic theory, amalgamation went through.

Here we are more than a decade later and the warnings that large municipalities are expensive to run and difficult to manage have been proven correct.

We've had the first two mayors of amalgamated Toronto end their terms of office embroiled in controversy and great public dissatisfaction.

No matter what the "official" issues are in the upcoming municipal election, the real issues will continue to be focused on the ideological battles that started back in the 1980s.

It's important to understand this, because there are some who would have you believe that a huge city like Toronto can be run on a shoe-string budget and that a municipal government's only function is to fill potholes.

The reality is that we once had a working municipal government system that was inexpensive to operate, efficient in its delivery of services, and was considered to be one of the best in the world.

Today it's none of these things, and we really need to be asking why.