In 2002, the Quebec provincial government decided to merge all the municipalities in the Island of Montreal and adjoining islands (the Montreal Urban Community) into the City of Montreal.
In 2006, following referenda, several of those municipalities voted to separate or “demerge”: Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Senneville, Baie-d’Urfé, Kirkland, Beaconsfield, Pointe-Claire, Dorval, Dollard-Des Ormeaux, L’Île-Dorval, Montréal-Ouest, Côte-Saint-Luc, Hampstead, Mont-Royal, Westmount, and Montréal-Est, if I have that correctly from memory.
I’m from Spokane Valley, WA and that’s not what happened. Before Spokane Valley became a city, it was an unincorporated part of Spokane County. It was never part of the City of Spokane.
Incidentally, I never cared for the choice of “Spokane Valley” as the name. For one thing, I knew too many people from outside the region would confuse it with Spokane.
For that matter, the mergers happened all across the province, not only on Montreal Island. There were a few de-mergers outside of Montreal Island as well, which explains why L’Ancienne-Lorette is now an enclave in Quebec City.
I don’t really understand how Montreal politics work, although I admit that not being a Montrealer I haven’t really looked into it. I hear a lot of talk about “borough mayors”, and I wonder, are those the “merged” or “de-merged” boroughs? I’d assume the latter since in both cities I’ve lived in the former cities (“boroughs” or “sectors”) have no separate government, but then why not say “city mayors” instead?
South Pasadena, California, split from Pasadena in 1888. They remain separate cities.
This is of some consequence, as South Pasadena has been preventing the completion of the 710 freeway, which was planned to run through it, for many decades, despite the fact that Pasadena and other nearby cities want it to be completed, and suffer traffic problems on their surface streets caused by the gap in the freeway.
Headingley wasn’t always part of Winnipeg, either; in 1972, several RMs, towns (including the town of St. James-Assiniboia, which I believe formerly included Headingley), and the central city of Winnipeg all merged in the Unicity reforms. Headingley was part of Winnipeg for over 20 years, though.
That was a trend all across Canada; Metropolitan Toronto was an amalgamation of 13 then 7 boroughs (IIRC) for decades until turned into one big city about 15 years ago. Ontario seemed to have been the biggest pusher for consolidation of tiny municipalities. This gets rid of fragemented services and other inefficiencies and a lot of petty local politics. It also made comprehensive city-wide planning simpler.
The process of separation(and amalgamation) is usually up to the province or state, which controls a lot of the rights and processes of municipal government. Canada seems to have done more in eliminating tiny suburban entities because they have a tighter thumb on the local governments. As mentioned about Montreal and WInnipeg, the process was that popular discontent was allowed to express itself in a referendum and then the provincial government basically legislated the change; if they wanted to, they could ahve ignored the issue, at their peril, like any political entity. it’s not like Kosovo or East Timor where an armed insurrection will change the map.
The Township of South Hackensack, NJ, has been reduced to three discontinuous segments because former portions of the town broke away to form boroughs.
The only one I am aware of: the city of Rye Brook, NY, broke away from Port Chester, NY, in the 1950’s. Rye Brook abuts the very rich, very prestigious town of Rye, NY, whereas Port Chester is a blue collar, poor city. The people of the new town (Rye Brook) experienced an immediate increase in their property values, and were freed from the high school taxes of Port Chester.
Over the years, the disparity has grown-Port Chester is now a run-doen, old city, inhabited largely by immigrants.
Piedmont, CA used to be part of Oakland, and East Grand Rapids, MI used to be part of Grand Rapids. Both seceded in the 1920’s or so as they wanted to feel superior to their parent cities.
The borough mayors are the mayors of each part of the merged city. Each borough has both borough and city-level councillors. I’m not sure what the division of power is. I know, for example, that snow removal is left up to the boroughs, which seems ridiculously expensive to me. There’s a major ad campaign going on right now regarding these inefficiencies - I think it’s being sponsored by the major labour unions.
A similar thing is true in the Sherbrooke area, FWIW. Although the towns of Lennoxville and Rock Forest (for example) no longer officially exist (much to my sadness) they are still boroughs in the City of Sherbrooke and retain some local powers.
I don’t follow local news very much so I guess you may be right, but my understanding is that Sherbrooke is mostly governed in a centralised manner. I certainly have never heard of borough mayors here. And in any case, the borough borders have moved since the merger, so clearly the municipal government has the power to make changes to the borough structure of the city.
In Gatineau, the former cities (called sectors) have no official powers and are solely geographical terms. The councillors’ districts follow sectorial borders (in other word, no district straddles two or more sectors) but that’s about all.
Thanks for your explanation of borough mayors (and borough councillors, which is something I don’t remember hearing about if I have). It seems inefficient to me; the purpose of the mergers was to make economies of scale, not keep on governing the cities as tiny semi-independent entities.
To add to what mnemosyne once said, the pre-2002 parts are divided up into boroughs which are equal in status to the merged boroughs. (Certain merged municipalities are combined into one borough, such as L’Ile-Bizard–Ste-Geneviève or Pierrefonds-Roxboro.) Each borough’s structure is a little different – some boroughs have councils that consist of their city councillors only, some boroughs have additional borough councillors, some borough councils have only the borough mayor (who is a city councillor ex officio) and borough councillors, with no additional city councillors, and Ville-Marie has a bizarre system with the mayor of Montreal as borough mayor, three city councillors, and two councillors from other boroughs appointed to serve on their borough councillor.
Not to hear certain Westmounters tell it. They still have the bumper stickers.
Do you have a cite showing that any part of what is now Piedmont was ever an incorporated part of Oakland?
Oakland was founded as a town in 1852, but its area was much smaller than is currently the case. The East Bay received a massive influx of people fleeing the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, and many of them settled, so the Oakland area population increased dramatically.
From the City of Piedmont’s “History” page: “On January 7, 1907, Hugh Craig and James Ballentine filed papers with the State of California to incorporate a new city which was just 1.8 square miles in size. They called it Piedmont.” Nothing about it previously having been an incorporated part of Oakland.
Or, from Wikipedia: “Two elections were held among the citizens of Piedmont in 1907, both of which narrowly upheld the decision for Piedmont to become a separate city, rather than become a neighborhood within the city of Oakland.”
There doesn’t appear to be any issue of secession, just a choice made at the time of incorporation. In the end, Oakland grew to completely surround Piedmont, and the latter receives immense benefit from its proximity to the cultural benefits of the former.
I came in to mention Staten Island. The secession movement actually lasted until Rudy Giuliani became mayor, and a secession referendum on the 1993 ballot won a good majority of votes. But between the fact that they could not legally unilaterally secede (and New York City wasn’t about to let them go) and the fact that a Republican won the mayoralty for a change, the movement pretty much stopped then.
