[Argument 192] My argument needs your valuable suggestions!

[procrastinator1357]

I am not a native speaker of English, so please criticize as MUCH as possible. Thank you so much!

“The following is a letter to the editor of the Roseville Gazette.
‘Despite opposition from some residents of West Roseville, the arguments in favour of merging the townships of Roseville and West Roseville are overwhelming. First, residents in both townships are confused about which authority to contact when they need a service; for example, the police department in Roseville receives many calls from residents of West Roseville. This sort of confusion would be eliminated with the merger. Second, the savings in administrative costs would be enormous, since services would no longer be duplicated: we would have only one fire chief, one tax department, one mayor, and so on. And no jobs in city government would be lost – employees could simply be reassigned. Most importantly, the merger will undoubtedly attract business investments as it did when the townships of Hamden and North Hamden merged ten years ago.’”



This article predicts the potential merits of the merger of Roseville and West Roseville townships. The anecdotal evidences seem plausible at a first glance, but close inspection reveals that they lend scant support to the author’s argument.

Merging the townships of Roseville and West Roseville may well eliminate the confusion concerning which authority to contact, but the author fails to provide solid evidence of this claim. The only example given is the fact that Roseville police station receives many calls from residents of West Roseville. Without ruling out other possibilities, the author assumes too hastily that confusion is the cause of such mistaken phone calls. Perhaps some West Roseville residents contact Roseville police station simply because it is closer and doing so can bring them faster service. If this is the case, merger may not eliminate “mistaken phone calls”. The police department of the combined town of West Roseville and Roseville may still receive phone calls from residents of neighbouring towns, whose own police departments are less available.

Even if the mistaken phone calls are attributable to confusion, the example of police department alone is unrepresentative of all towns’ services. Perhaps the citizens of both towns know very well which authority to contact, the police department being the only exception – because the phone numbers of the police departments differ by only one digit, for example. Merger seems unnecessary under such circumstances where confusion could be readily avoided by the adoption of other more effective methods, e.g. changing the phone number of one the police departments.

The author further considers merger to be cost-saving, on the basis that no services will be duplicated. However, no evidence has shown that a single branch of each service is adequate for the combined area and population. Without additional information, merger does not significantly reduce administrative costs, since the total amount of duty and the number of employees are virtually unaffected. On the contrary, merger may increase the complexity of the administrative hierarchy, which in turn making the action more expensive.

Finally, the situation of Hamden and North Hamden ten years ago may not be applicable to Roseville and West Roseville. Perhaps Hamden and North Hamden were both industrial towns with very few residents, while Roseville and West Roseville are bedroom communities with many school children. Perhaps merger of Hamden and North Hamden increased the funding of research institutes, which subsequently attracted more business cooperation; Roseville and West Roseville are rural towns in which there are no universities or research institutes at all. In neither of the two cases above, will merger of Roseville and West Roseville have a similar affect to that of North Hamden and Hamden.

In summary, the argumentation of this article is weak and unsubstantiated. To strengthen it, the author should make a complete survey of all towns’ services, confirming that confusion is a widely existing problem to which merger is among the most effective solutions. In addition, it would be helpful to conduct a financial analysis of the administrative costs before and after merger. In order to make the anecdotal evidence of North Hamden and Hamden more convincing, the author needs to establish its similarities to the experience of Roseville and West Roseville.