The issue of how Niagara is governed could take up a big piece of regional council’s agenda over the next year.

With councillors poised to talk in September about how Niagara is governed, they’ll get a primer at this week’s council session. They’ll be walked through the problems of governance by Brock University professor David Siegel.

The work will begin in earnest in the fall, said Regional Chair Gary Burroughs, but Thursday’s presentation will help councillors determine what the Region’s problems are before they set about fixing them.

“There are no quick answers, or we would’ve started with the answers,” he said.

While it is a topic that has been heavily studied on and off over the past decade and more, Burroughs said the Region is on schedule to make progress.

He said any changes that need approval from the province must be filed by next spring, and some could involve triple majority votes — a majority of regional councillors and a majority of local councils representing a majority of voters in the last election — behind the change could be made.

Siegel’s report notes council will have to balance democracy with delivering services. He said that’s difficult, because democracy works best in small units while some services are easier to deliver on a broad scale.

The report urges councillors to focus on singling out what’s wrong with the Region before jumping to conclusions.

Burroughs figured one problem is that it’s unclear sometimes which roles fall to the Region or the 12 lower-tier municipalities.

“We’re not as good as we could be in communicating with the (municipalities) and them at communicating with us,” he said. “I see that as a challenge.” And he said there’s a trust issue. “Trust is the backbone of all these things,” he said. “There hasn’t been a lot and there’s no one to blame but all of us.”

Burroughs said the report will give councillors the summer to weigh the governance issue.