ANTIGONISH: The Mayor of the Town of Antigonish says council has been receiving a lot of praise from the community for their decision to investigate consolidating into a single regional government with the neighbouring Municipality of the County of Antigonish.
“From what I’ve gathered, from talking to people on the street, and from the messages, emails and phone calls, people are generally happy with the fact that we’re looking at the idea of it,” Laurie Boucher told The Reporter. “We’re not saying we are doing it, we’re not saying we’ll never do it, what we’re saying is we’re exploring the possibilities in what it would look like.”
While the first regulatory step was council’s unanimous decision to explore the consolidation, Boucher advised the next step after that would be making sure questions and concerns are answered.
Those questions and concerns, she said would hopefully be answered during a joint meeting with the municipality and the Federation of Nova Scotia Municipalities.
As Boucher noted, she was not involved with municipal politics in 2006 when the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board stated there wasn’t enough support and didn’t allow a merger of the two, the pair are taking a different route this time around, through active legislature.
“It’s the atmosphere, it’s the state of mind of both municipalities, it’s the financial situation of both municipalities, and it’s the idea of why we’re doing it,” she said of the investigation and gathering of information. “And we’re still a long ways away from council making their final vote.”
After all the questions that councillors have are answered, Boucher added that’s when they’ll turn to the community to see what they think and what their concerns are.