The green roof on the Sackville Town Hall might get bigger, thanks to a federal grant obtained by EOS Eco Energy.
At last night’s special meeting of council, town engineer Dwayne Acton laid out the proposal from EOS to expand the roof by 1000 square feet at no cost to the town. Acton spoke favourably about the offer, and said the expanded roof could be planted with flowers or used to grow vegetables for distribution through the food bank.
“There’s no cost to the town,” said Acton Monday night. “We feel that it would be a great addition to the existing green roof, and potentially give us the ability to help our community if we decide to do the food bank option.”
Acton said that EOS has $30,000 in grant funding available for the project.
“They have upwards of $5,000 to put towards engineering consulting, to make sure that the roof will handle the additional weight,” said Acton. “And $25,000 towards the construction.”
He said EOS has asked the town to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as part of the project, which he distributed to council.
Unfortunately, as is the case with all documents discussed at monthly special council meetings, the document was not available to the public.
Councillor Shawn Mesheau pointed out that one of the stipulations of the MOU was that EOS would be able to access the space for events or workshops, and he asked if the town had a formal policy for public access to the current space.
Dwayne Acton replied that as he understood it, the green roof was accessible to the public during town hall business hours, 8:30am to 4:30pm on weekdays. He said the town has used the roof to host some events and meetings.
CAO Jamie Burke added that there is no policy on public use of the green roof, but that one could be created in future if the need arose.
Councillor Andrew Black asked about ongoing costs of maintaining the green roof, but Dwayne Acton said costs were minimal for the current roof, and he expects the same of the potential expansion.
Acton said staff would be looking for a motion from council, presumably at their meeting next week (November 9, 2020), to have the Mayor and Clerk sign the MOU with EOS, and move forward with the project.
I’m glad you pointed out the frustration of watching the ‘discussion group’ council meetings (or attending in person when we could do that) and not having access to documents / diagrams / charts etc which are provided to Council by Staff. As you mentioned, it is very difficult to follow the discussion with any degree of comprehension. This issue has been brought up numerous times in the past few years especially, but still we face the same defensiveness when staff are asked to share any information with ‘us’.
As for the EOS ‘deal’ to expand the green roof, one has to ask what is in it for them? Apparently, as Councilor Mesheau mentioned, they require the town to sign an agreement giving them access to use the space, prior to their doing any work on it. One wonders what happens with their offer if the town should refuse to sign said agreement. Will their grant dollars simply go elsewhere?
As for public access to the green roof, it’s been our understanding all along that it is ‘out of bounds’ for ‘we the public’, unless we’re attending a town event held there. So, who does the green roof benefit? At this time it appears to be just town staff and Council, unless they agree to grant access to EOS.
Perhaps that grant money would be better spent on a project which the public will at least be able to SEE. That’s my two cents, for what it’s worth.