Decisions on Entity 40 council will be made tonight. We asked some political scientists, what’s at stake?
The word ‘undemocratic’ has come up a number of times in describing the province’s forced amalgamation of Sackville, Dorchester and three surrounding districts. There’s the fact that despite official protest by both the elected councils of Dorchester and Sackville, the plan is being forced through by the province. There’s also the fact that the province has retained complete control on all decisions about the new Entity 40, and has refused to conduct any public engagement on key decisions, or even open up its advisory committee meetings to the public.
The first of the big decisions to be made by provincially-appointed consultant Chad Peters is up for discussion tonight, at a closed meeting of an advisory committee made up of Shawn Mesheau and Andrew Black from the town of Sackville, Debbie Wiggins-Colwell and Robert Corkerton from the village of Dorchester, Mary Ellen Trueman from the Point de Bute Local Service District (LSD), and Matt Beal from the Dorchester LSD. (There are as yet not representatives from the Sackville LSD on the committee.)
The committee will be asked to come to a consensus on how the new Entity 40 council will operate, and if they can’t, Peters will make the call. The decision will be need to be made by either Wednesday or Friday, depending on who you ask, but it will be made this week.
The lightning-fast decision process will determine how many seats there will be on a new Entity 40 council, and how those seats will be filled, either by election at-large, or election by ward, or some combination.… Continue