ARICHAT: The municipality is coming up with a better way to let ratepayers know about changes to their bills.
During the Sept. 27 regular monthly meeting, council accepted a recommendation from the committee of the whole that letters and notices about significant changes to water and sewer rates be referred to the municipal Bylaw and Policy Committee for review.
Last June’s budget prescribed higher sewer and water bills for some ratepayers.
Warden Amanda Mombourquette said council wants to come up with a way to make sure the public is fully aware of such changes.
“We had increases, really across the board and we tried to keep them as small as we could. We held a whole budget extra budget meeting trying to get that tax rate down, but still at the same time trying to reinvest in our communities. That’s what we heard from constituents, that that’s the kind of thing that they wanted back,” she said. “We’re all really concerned as a council about our infrastructure deficit. It’s something that we’re going to have to address. Water and sewer systems are not getting any younger, as are other pieces of infrastructure, including our arena building, sidewalks, and all that we need to be maintaining. It’s really, really difficult because our tax base has been shrinking.”
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Council accepted a recommendation from its committee of the whole to have municipal staff prepare a draft Request for Proposals from an external source to aid in the creation of a strategic plan.
Warden Amanda Mombourquette told The Reporter the municipality will be using past strategic plans for reference.
“We will be looking at likely doing some community consultation. I can’t really tell you exactly what it’s going to look like quite yet, because we’re still in the draft mode of the RFP. There definitely seems to be a real desire to go back to the community, reconnect with them,” she said. “We’ll consider previous publications like that, that have been done for previous councils.”
In addition to past strategic plans, she said the municipality will assemble an information package that also includes other documents like the trails study and the Age Friendly Communities plan.
“One of the things that I’m very hopeful for is that it will also result in a restructuring of our committees of council,” she said. “How those committees are formed, making sure that there are strong and consistent terms of reference, that type of thing. I think also, I’d really be interested in having our strategic plan more closely tied to our capital plan because I don’t really feel like there’s been a strong linkage there in the past.”
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Council accepted a recommendation from its committee of the whole to create a fire department levy payment schedule policy.
The new policy was referred to the municipal Bylaw and Policy Committee, which will then make a recommendation to council.
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Council approved grant recommendations from its committee of the whole, specifically $500 from the District 2 fund for the Lennox Passage Yacht Club.
The River Bourgeois Mariner Society was approved under the Type 4 Regional Health General Grant Fund for funding of $1,000, with $500 from the District 4 fund and $500 from the general grant fund.
Council approved a funding request of $7,500 to the Arichat Community Development Association from the Type 4 Regional Health General Grant Fund, with $1,250 from the each fund in Districts 1 and 2, and the remaining $500 from the general grant fund.
A request for funding of $15,000 from the Type 4 Regional Health General Grant Fund for the Pan Cape Breton Food Hub Co-op was denied because $2,000 was previously allocated in the budget.
“That was probably us not keeping as close a track as we should have,” Mombourquette said. “When I received the Food Hub’s request, and they put the whole application together, I thought I looked at the list, I must have missed it. We already provided them with funding as part of our budget deliberations. We chose to stick with that.”
Council denied a request from Raising the Villages Co-operative Ltd. for $2,500 under the Type 4 Regional Health General Grant Fund.
The warden explained that council “has every intention” of supporting the group.
“There was some additional discussion about this at committee of the whole and we need to make an adjustment here,” Mombourquette told council. “I made misstep in procedure at the committee of the whole. What ended up happening was the motion was passed but with one councillor voting against because the way it was passed was to take it from each of the district funds when we should have just taken from the regional health general fund. That’s what we want to correct at our Oct. 12 committee of the whole meeting.”
Because he mistakenly made a motion, District 5 Councillor Brent Sampson requested council revisit this request at the next committee of the whole session.
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Council approved two new members to sit on its new Accessibility Advisory Committee.
The St. Peter’s Village Commission reached out to the municipality to see if they would be interested in a joint committee after the village commission advertised for committee members but didn’t get many responses.
On July 14, the committee voted unanimously in favour of joining forces, Mombourquette said, putting the final decision before council.
Because Meghan Hayter and Allison Martell are both village commission employees, Chief Administrative Officer Don Marchand said they can automatically become members, but council had to approve member-at-large Jessica Gibson, which it did.