GREENFIELD PARK – The echoes of the merger-demerger debacle of a dozen years ago is reverberating in a tiny borough that is now part of Longueuil.
The traditionally Anglophone area of Greenfield Park will go from having three seats on Longueuil’s city council to just one, and opponents of the move are worried that it would reduce the borough’s voice in the affairs of the bigger merged city.
“Right now in Greenfield Park we have three seats, with three voices in the big city of Longueuil,” said Robert Myles, a borough councillor running for the one borough president slot that will sit in Longueuil’s city council.
“What’s actually happening now as of November, we’ll only have one voice in the city of Greenfield Park.”
As part of a measure ostensibly done for cost-cutting purposes, Longueuil will go from having 26 to 15 seats in its council, part of an across-the-board reduction in seats among its boroughs.
But since Greenfield Park is the only officially bilingual borough – with a minimal number of seats – Myles worries that the cull could further dilute representation by the borough’s Anglophone minority, currently pegged at under 40 per cent.
“We have a bilingual status and we should be able to maintain it.”
His opponent in the borough president race, Michael O’Grady, disagrees that Anglophone rights in the borough are at risk under the new system.
“I am an Anglophone, in Greenfield Park, I sit on the RTL, I was on the executive for three years,” O’Grady said.
“I think we’re very represented in the agglomeration.”
The spectre of agglomeration brings with it issues like the perceived possibility of declining services. In Greenfield Park, a lack of police presence is a common complaint.
Two summers ago, residents irked city administrators when they cleaned up graffiti on their own rather than wait for an official response.
The unused police station – a holdover from the borough’s days as a town before agglomeration – is still a sore point.
“We’ve had graffiti issues in the past, we’ve had surveillance issues,” said Jason Matuzewiski, who’s running for a borough councillor seat.
“If you talk to residents they are still concerned about a lack of surveillance.
The election is slated for Sunday.
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