The meetings of advisory committees appointed by the province to help steer the amalgamation of Sackville, Dorchester and surrounding local service districts will not be open to the public.
Sackville mayor Shawn Mesheau says that two committees will be struck, one made up of staff, and one made up of elected and appointed representatives from each of the five areas being amalgamated. The department of local government says that the two mayors (Shawn Mesheau and Debbie Wiggins-Colwell from Dorchester) will sit on the committee, as well as Mary-Ellen Trueman from the Pointe de Bute local service district. Another two representatives, from the Sackville and Dorchester local service districts respectfully, could be appointed this week.
Mesheau says that based on a request from Sackville town council, the number of representatives on the committee will be expanded to two for each area, and Deputy Mayor Andrew Black has been selected to sit on the committee representing Sackville along with the mayor. But whether it is five or ten representatives, the meetings of the committee will be held behind closed doors.
“These aren’t public meetings,” says Mesheau. “They are meetings that are being held through the province, through the facilitator.”
The province recently appointed Chad Peters as a “facilitator” to oversee the formation of Entity 40, plus four other new entities in the southeast region, as well as the transition for Regional Service Commission 8.
Peters is currently CEO of a Moncton-based communications firm and former manager with Southwestern Energy Resources, the company behind controversial fracking exploration in New Brunswick in the early 2010s. He is also a former staffer in the Progressive Conservative legislative office, and ran for the PCs in a provincial by-election in Moncton East riding in 2007. In January 2020, he announced his intention to run for mayor of Moncton, but was not on the ticket for the pandemic-delayed election in 2021.
As one of 17 facilitators picked by the provincial government to oversee dozens of amalgamations in the province, Peters had his first meeting with Sackville staff and council last Wednesday, January 26. That meeting was also not open to the public.
Although all of council were invited to attend, Mesheau says this first meeting with Peters was not a meeting of council, and therefore not subject to requirements under the Local Government Act that all regular and special meetings of council be open to the public, with exceptions made for discussions on a number of sensitive topics.
“It’s no different than myself having a meeting with the leader of the opposition parties or with a particular Minister,” says Mesheau. “In this case, Mr. Peters reached out and requested a meeting with council in order to start with the process.”
Chad Peters deflected an interview request from CHMA to the province’s local government communications team, who simply said he was “not available for an interview.”
While the advisory committees to the province will meet privately, a committee of Sackville town council will meet in public starting this Wednesday at 6pm, online. Council struck its Municipal Reform Committee on December 13, at the same time that they approved a letter to Daniel Allain, requesting that the town of Sackville be left untouched in the province’s amalgamation plan. That request was rejected by the province.
The agenda for Wednesday’s committee will include, “a brief history of the local governance reform process, our current situation and next steps,” according to the town’s website. You can access the meeting at this link.
Frustration and anger over amalgamation
Councillor Bill Evans attended last Wednesday’s meeting between council and Chad Peters, and left feeling as frustrated and angry as he has been since the province announced its amalgamation plan. “They’re not helping us through this process,” says Evans. “They’re forcing us to go through this process.”
Evans stressed he was speaking as an individual and not on behalf of council when he criticized the actions of minister of local governance reform, Daniel Allain.
“This amalgamation is being forced on us, and it was done after a year of ‘consultation’,” says Evans. “And I’m making air quotes around ‘consultation’, because the minister throughout the process assured us there would be no forced amalgamation.”
“It really annoys me that the minister lied to us, and that we’re being forced to do something that the people in town don’t want, if they knew what was happening, and council has explicitly voted against,” says Evans.
Evans points out that while the first meeting was not open to the public, it was also not formally in camera, and so he feels able to talk about what was discussed. “It’s very important, and I think the public should know about it,” says Evans.
Evans says the first meeting didn’t yield many answers. “Not because they were being kept secret, but because [Peters] didn’t know the answers,” says Evans. ”That’s one of my big criticisms of the whole process, is the decision has been made to do something without the groundwork being done.”
The first issues on the agenda for the new advisory committee will be electoral representation and the future name of Entity 40. The town of Sackville currently elects eight councillors at large, but in a larger Entity 40, that could yield results that shut out representation from areas with less dense population, so a ward system will likely be up for consideration. The committee will also advise on the number of council seats.
Public to be informed and consulted, says Mesheau
While the meetings will not be open to the public, Mesheau says that communication and consultation are being considered.
“Communication is one of the things that we want to ensure is happening,” says Mesheau. “I know staff are talking about that. And Mr. Peters was talking about that with them in regards to how we will find that avenue to communicate the information to the public.“
Mesheau says he is not sure if the meeting minutes or agendas would be made available to the public, even if the meetings themselves are closed.
Mesheau says the representatives on the committee, such as himself and Andrew Black, will be responsible for communicating what’s happening back to their communities. “We’ll find every means that we can in order to get that information out to the public,” he says.
The public will be consulted once some proposals have been formulated, says Mesheau. “Within a certain time frame, the expectation is to have determination around a name or a suggestion for a name, determination around electoral representation, and to get that into the hands of the public,” says Mesheau. “So they have the opportunity to see it, understand it, ask questions about it, and provide suggestions to it.”
Mesheau says the advisory committee will be working on a consensus basis in order to come to its recommendations to the province, rather than a majority rules voting system. “That will be the job of Mr. Peters,” says Mesheau, “to find that consensus. That will be key as the advisory committee will feature equal representation from the five areas, despite vast population differences. Mesheau is not concerned about those differences.
“You can look at the areas and say, well, yeah, that isn’t as populated as Sackville is, but at the same end, when it comes to forming an entity, we all are in this together,” he says.
The lion’s share of the work in the amalgamation will be happening with a second, staff committee, says Mesheau. “The real heavy lifting is going to be on the operational side,” he says.
That concerns Bill Evans. “The staff are fully employed now, doing the priorities that council established and budgeted for in the fall,” says Evans. “You don’t just do a project as big as amalgamating five districts off a corner of your desk.”
Evans says his concern in the short term is, “the projects that we have planned for this year are not going to be done as well as they would have been had staff been able to do this full time.”
Evans doesn’t mince words about the decision to amalgamate and the coming process.
“This is a travesty,” he says. But he’s also resigned to what’s happening, even if he won’t be around to take part.
“Our professional and competent staff will work with the province to do what they have to do,” says Evans. “And so it’s not going to be the end of the world.”
“We’re going to end up with a new entity, because we’re being forced to do it. And I accept that reality,” says Evans. “But I am not interested in participating in it, or representing it afterwards. I’m going to be thrown out of office in November, because the minister has decided, even though I was elected to a four year term, that I will serve a year and a bit.”
The town of Sackville has set up a page on its website to inform people about the amalgamation process, and links to Wednesday’s meeting can be found there.