Kentville mayor says Kings coalition trying to bully town into amalgamation

A 600-name petition urging Kentville to participate in a county-wide governance study is an attempt to bully the town into amalgamation, says its mayor.

The town, along with the Municipality of Kings County and the Town of Wolfville, agreed about 2 years ago to study how to streamline the delivery and costs of services to the 60,000 or so residents of the area. Berwick did not want to take part.

Now Kentville has decided to back out of the process, at least for now, says Mayor Dave Corkum.

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"We will be releasing a more thorough report on this to our residents as a better understanding of our position," he told CBC Radio's Information Morning.

He accused the Kings Citizens Coalition of using the study as a means of forcing the county to amalgamate under one government.

'We're not going to be rushed'

"We had been disappointed with this group to try and bully us through different social media and comments that we were complacent that we were an old boys club."

He defended Kentville's governance record.

"Our town has one of the lowest tax rates of any town in Nova Scotia, we have a three-minute call-out for police, excellent public works," he said.

"We are not going to be rushed into, or bullied into, something by a special interest group. This town has way too much to lose, for one thing we have $14 million in the bank. We take only the capital out of that, we do our interest off that each year to do capital works."

Governments top heavy

But coalition member Pierre Clouthierof New Minas denies amalgamation is necessary to make governments run more efficiently.

"We simply want each of the four municipal units to agree to participate, and fund, an independent study that would look at government overall in the county and see if there are opportunities for running things less expensively or more consolidated," he said.

"In addition to the cost of the overhead, we have municipal units vying and competing for tourism funds, development funds. We need a co-ordinated approach for the economic development of the community."

Governments themselves are top heavy, he said.

"In Halifax, one elected official represents 25,000 voters. In Kings County, we have 62 elected officials for 60,000 people a ratio of roughly 960 voters per elected official. We feel there is an opportunity to consolidate some services."