Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows Are Better Together Than Apart. The Relationship Needs More Investment.

The two municipalities share services, share demographics, and share many of the same challenges. The formal and informal cooperation between them is valuable and underused.

Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows are distinct municipalities with distinct identities. Pitt Meadows has its own council, its own agricultural character, its own community priorities. And yet the two communities share an RCMP detachment, share library services, share demographics, and share many of the same infrastructure and growth pressures.

The formal service-sharing arrangements between the two municipalities are genuinely valuable and genuinely rare. Most neighbouring municipalities in Metro Vancouver maintain more separation than Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows do, often to the detriment of both.

The relationship could be deeper. Joint advocacy on transit, on the Lougheed Highway, on flood protection along the Pitt River, would carry more weight than either municipality carries alone. Joint planning on the agricultural land base they share — including the Pitt Meadows farming district that is one of the most productive in the region — would produce better outcomes than each municipality managing its portion independently.

The two communities have more in common than they sometimes acknowledge. Building on that common ground, rather than being protective of separate jurisdictions, would serve both communities better.

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