Annexation, Amalgamation or Municipal Coup?

Whats’ the difference between an annexation, an amalgamation, and a municipal coup?

Municipal annexation is when a municipality expands its boundaries into adjacent areas not already incorporated into a municipality. This means there would be no pre-existing city or town with mayor, no “government” to displace although it could previously be part of a service district or other body. This is achieved and evidenced as consented to with a plebiscite of the residents involved, as with Dartmouth and Westphal. This has been a common response of cities to urbanization in neighboring areas. A vote of confidence in a growing city.

A merger, consolidation, or a city county merger – sometimes referred to as an amalgamation – is the combination of two or more municipalities (cities, towns, townships, counties) into one administrative entity, displacing the pre-existing institutions and governmental structure. This is achieved and evidenced as consented to with a plebiscite or referendum. Like New York City, with its boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island and The Bronx, a show of unity and strength through democracy.

A municipal coup, sometimes referred to as amalgamation, is the combination of two or more municipalities (cities, towns, townships, counties) into one administrative entity, displacing the pre-existing governmental structure without consent, without plebiscite; while at the same time, clawing back rights and democratic representative institutions extra-judicially. Like Nova Scotia’s unilateral city county mergers — which first “streamlined” disparate units for “efficiencies” promised but never gained — which later “streamlined” the process of elected school board dissolution, with no incorporated bodies of “the people” left to litigate for “the people”. A municipal coup proceeds without even so much as a non-binding plebiscite, as is the case with the dissolution of Dartmouth, Halifax, Sydney, and other associated towns. Unilateral, dictatorial state action meant to further remove any iota of self governance from what used to be “the people”, who are now “the villeins”.