Amalgamation

[danbrotherston]

Interesting point.  

I only ask this as someone who doesn't use the programs a lot, but are they that locally specific?

For example, the region library provides rural services in a really specific way, i.e., short hours libraries, mobile libraries.

As tomh009 mentioned city libraries do local community things.

It's not impossible to keep these things in a larger organization, but it is easy to lose, especially when focusing on achieving efficiency gains (which won't always be realized if local context must be kept).

Fire sounds like a good example to me, but I don't really know for sure--I'm not an expert, or even really spent any time researching it.  I know rural fire fighting is different from city, I could be missing other things...I shouldn't assume that I know, even though I usually do.

A great example IMO is citizen point of contact.  Right now I have to know what city I'm in, whether the road I'm calling about is regional or city, and how that particular jurisdiction deals with the particular type of issue I'm calling about.  Something that I think would eliminate the majority of calls for amalgamation would be to provide a unified regional contact centre that a citizen can call with any issue, and have that regional contact centre do the proper dispatching.

Yes, not exactly gaining efficiency in government cost, but gaining efficiency in providing better service.