Council rejects new begging and loitering bylaw, but balks at repealing old ones
At their meeting on Tuesday evening, Tantramar council voted down a newly proposed bylaw on loitering and begging, and then opted to keep two existing and similar bylaws on the books in Sackville and Dorchester.
The proposed bylaw is part of the review and consolidation of bylaws for the new municipality of Tantramar being carried out by the municipal clerk.
The Tantramar-wide bylaw would have made “asking for money, food, or help as charity” illegal, and also banned loitering, defined as “remaining in an area with no obvious purpose.” The new bylaw also included a ban on soliciting door-to-door, unless what’s being sold is a book that’s been previously approved by council. (That provision appears to be a call back to the former Municipalities Act, which set up exemptions to solicitation laws for publishers of encyclopedias, educational texts, and Bibles. While Tantramar council has no list of exempted books, the province did keep a list of specific books that were allowed to be sold door-to-door in the province.)
Councillor Josh Goguen was the first to speak on the proposed Tantramar-wide bylaw, and referenced issues that the city of Halifax has had with police street checks. In 2017, Halifax police street check data showed that Black people in the city were three times more likely than white people to be stopped by police.
“We’re basically saying to somebody that, you’re sitting down, and the bylaw officer can come up to you and say, What are you doing?… Continue
$1 million donation for pedway withdrawn over lack of progress
An anonymous person who had pledged $1 million towards building a pedestrian bridge across the Trans Canada highway has withdrawn the funding promise in the wake of what a local volunteer calls a lack of action from the town of Tantramar. The citizens group that had been proponents of the project have also resigned.
Retired doctor Ross Thomas was one of those working on the pedway project on and off for fifteen years. He first presented the news of the potential $1 million donation to Sackville town council in December 2021.
Thomas says he doesn’t know the identity of the potential donor, but knows they first started expressing concerns about the future of the project about six months ago, shortly after Tantramar Pedway Group members Christina DeHaas and Jeff MacKinnon presented to the new Tantramar council in June 2023.
DeHaas and McKinnon requested that the new council commit to pursuing further capital funding for the project, and enter into an agreement with the province’s Department of Natural Resources to take over control of the Trans Canada Trail within town of Tantramar boundaries. DeHaas urged council to take swift action to make use of the $1 million donation, because “the window of opportunity is running out,” she said at the time.… Continue
Meet the candidates: Josh Goguen, running in Ward 3 (Central Sackville)
Josh Goguen is originally from Moncton, and has been living in Sackville with his family for the past 16 years. He’s fluently bilingual, works for Moneris in technology operations analysis, and runs one of Sackville’s community Facebook groups.
Listen to CHMA’s Meet The Candidates interview with Josh Goguen, which took place at CHMA on November 9, 2022.
Goguen is running for Ward 3, where residents will elect four councillors from a pool of nine candidates, including Goguen, Alice Cotton, Sahitya Pendurthi, Virgil Hammock, Bruce Phinney, Michael Tower, Allison Butcher, Charles Harvey, and Sana Mohammed. All candidates have interviews on CHMA, except for Charles Harvey who declined our request, and Sana Mohammed, who has yet to respond.
CHMA is compiling all its election coverage in one place, for your convenience. For more candidate interviews and other local elections coverage, click here.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: All right, Josh, thanks so much for coming in today. Really appreciate it.
Josh Goguen: Thank you for having me, Erica. It’s a pleasure.
CHMA: For those who might not already know you, tell us a bit about yourself.
Josh Goguen: So, my name is Josh Goguen. I am a resident of Sackville, obviously, for the last 16 years. I am married to my wonderful wife, Sarah, who works at Jean Coutu. And my son Ben is 13 years old now and he goes to Marshfield.… Continue