As cross border neighbours, the towns of Amherst and Sackville like to indulge in some friendly competition, with respective mayors occasionally throwing down the gauntlet to see which community can outperform the other.
Last year Sackville scored a win in the active community department by outperforming our Nova Scotia neighbours in ParticipACTION’s Community Better challenge. But this week Amherst beat Sackville to the punch on another initiative that both towns have declared a priority: the move away from using fossil fuels.
On Tuesday, staff at the Amherst stadium got trained on a new piece of equipment: a battery-powered Zamboni to replace their former natural-gas-powered ice cleaning machine.
According to a news release from the town, the new Zamboni cost $200,000, and is powered by sealed lithium batteries that do not require maintenance, have the same life expectancy as a gas-powered engine, and are emissions-free.
Amherst mayor David Kogon says in the release, “the elimination of emissions will make the Amherst Stadium a much healthier, safer and enjoyable experience for the fans and the athletes.” It also “creates a cleaner space,” for arena employees to work in, says Kogon.
Sackville staff at the Tantramar Civic Centre will need to wait just a little longer for that cleaner air space. Sackville’s Zamboni is due to for replacement next year, and town engineer Dwayne Acton says plans are afoot to make the replacement an electric one.
“It seems to be the popular choice these days, for obvious reasons,” says Acton. “It would be our intention to look at that. Of course, council has to make the final decision, but it is our intention to bring that forward to council when we do the budget in late 2022, for the 2023 capital budget season.”
Of course, the capital budget season this year will likely be quite different. Normally council starts discussing its budget plans with community groups in the fall, with a goal to approve a municipal budget by November. But this year, November will be election season in Entity 40, and the budget for 2023 will be approved by provincial appointee Chad Peters, and not the currently elected mayor and council. It’s not yet clear what role the council will play in advising Peters on the Entity 40 budget, though it has yet to be directly consulted by Peters about any other decisions regarding Entity 40.
Sackville did recently approve the purchase of another big piece of equipment. $400,000 of this year’s budget will go towards a new, non-electric street sweeper.
“They just currently do not have the option of an electric street sweeper that would have the size and the capacity that we need,” says Acton. Smaller electric street sweepers are available, he says, but those won’t work for Sackville’s needs. But the town did look into it, says Acton. “With this new climate lens, we do look at things like that when we evaluate a new piece of equipment,” he says.