10 Years & Comrade Miller Has Still To Harmonize Services

Megacity: A decade later Depending on who you talk to, amalgamation was a missed opportunity or a complete disaster

by SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN

The amalgamated city of Toronto will turn 10 years old this Tuesday - yet to most observers it is a city still plagued with very visible growing pains.

Depending on who you talk to, the amalgamation of six former cities and Metro into one government was either a missed opportunity or a complete disaster.

Certainly amalgamation has produced no shortage of memorable moments at City Hall over the past decade -- from the $100 million MFP computer leasing scandal to the Great Garbage strike of July 2002. It will be hard to ever forget Mayor Mel Lastman's moose or his decision to call in the army to dig out snowbound Toronto in January, 1999 when the city's still-to-be-harmonized snow-clearing services were unable to do the job.

There's no doubt amalgamation has been anything but a downsizing exercise. A KPMG study conducted for the Mike Harris provincial government in late 1996 predicted that in the first three years, a unified Toronto could save up to $645 million and $300 million annually. KPMG also figured the transition costs would be no more than $220 million.