‘We know it’s needed’: Freshwinds Co-op plans for up to 60 households on Fairfield Road
The latest stats are in from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), and the rental housing economy in New Brunswick continues to get worse for those renting. Average rents in the province were up 10.5% in October over the previous year, and the vacancy rate is down from 1.9% to just 1.5% according to the CMHC. At the same time, the price of buying a home in Tantramar is up over 86% since 2019, according to MLS data from local realtor Jamie Smith.
It’s a situation that makes finding affordable housing challenging, and one that Sabine Dietz and Eric Tusz-King have decided they can do something about.
Last week, Dietz and Tusz-King, and the rest of the members of the newly incorporated Freshwinds Eco-Village Housing Co-operative, announced plans for a major new village-style development in Sackville that could provide co-op housing for up to 60 households. Freshwinds has made the first step, purchasing 21 acres of land on Fairfield Road, the former farm of Bill and Inez Estabrooks, for $450,000.
“In order to afford this land, we are selling that house that’s at 64 Fairfield,” says Tusz-King, “and then we’re going to be selling some of the lots along the road.” The Freshwinds development will take place on the acreage behind the roadside lots, and if all goes well, Tusz-King says work on the property could start as early as this fall, with construction starting in spring 2025.… Continue
Tantramar mayor Andrew Black talks calls for meeting on Chignecto isthmus, more federal funding, and insurance company interest
Tantramar mayor Andrew Black has been talking about the Chignecto Isthmus a lot lately. In the mayor’s report at last week’s committee of the whole meeting, Black mentioned conversations with his counterparts in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, with an insurance executive concerned about reducing risk, and with former Sackville councillor and ClimAtlantic director Sabine Dietz, about hosting a discussion on how to protect the corridor between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
CHMA called him up to find out more:
Closing the information gap on the isthmus
Black told council last week that he and Mayor David Kogon of Amherst had met with ClimAtlantic’s Dietz to talk about an information sharing gap when it comes to the isthmus protection project.
In 2019, the province commissioned Wood Canada to study the isthmus and come up with options to protect it from rising sea levels and increasing frequency of severe storm events. That study was finally released in 2022, and the cost estimates it put forward have already more than doubled. Black says there’s more information out there, and considering that actual work on the isthmus is still years away, there’s plenty to discuss. Dietz has proposed a session involving municipal, provincial and federal representatives and various experts on how to protect the isthmus, and has asked the councils in Tantramar and Amherst for letters of support.… Continue
Council sends back climate change advisory appointments as Estabrooks calls committee rules into question
Tantramar council has delayed a series of appointments to the town’s Climate Change Advisory Committee (CCAC) after one councillor pointed out discrepancies between the length of the appointments and the committee’s terms of reference.
Councillor Matt Estabrooks asked to send back a motion to appoint Sabine Dietz, Dan Matthews, and Mikko McGregor-Corson. Though councillor Josh Goguen, who sits on the CCAC, and councillor Mike Tower voted against, the rest of council agreed with Estabrooks and so the appointments were sent back to staff for corrections.
Dietz is head of CLIMAtlantic, and a former Sackville councillor. She also ran against Estabrooks for his Ward 4 seat on Tantramar council last year. Matthews is a retired meteorologist and head of Dorchester’s Emergency Measures Organization. McGregor-Corson is an Environmental Studies student and organizer with Divest MTA. The three would have been appointed to serve on the advisory committee for 1.5 and 2.5 year terms, until December 2024 and December 2025. But Estabrooks pointed out that according to the CCAC’s terms of reference, at least two of those appointments should have been made shorter, to coincide with the terms of the people they are replacing.
The CCAC will now be asked to recommend two people—one student and one community member—to serve on the committee for just six months, and then deal with vacancies again at the end of this year.… Continue
Third time’s a charm for Sackville’s new fast EV charger, even with Ward 4 candidates opposed on issue
Earlier this month, in one of its final votes ever, Sackville Town Council approved a project that will see electrical upgrades and the installation of an EV charger in its downtown parking lot between Goya’s Pizza and the post office. In the process, two candidates for a seat in the new town of Tantramar’s Ward 4 faced off with opposing views on the town’s EV infrastructure strategy.
This is actually the third time Sackville Town Council has approved the EV charger project. It first came up a year ago in budget deliberations when councillors agreed to set aside $108,000 for the project. Then this summer, council approved three motions that authorized staff to purchase the EV charger, to hire Tantramar Electric to do about $100,000 in upgrades, and to pursue funding to help pay for the project. At the time, three councillors voted against the project, Ken Hicks, Bruce Phinney, and Matt Estabrooks.
The project came back to council this month due to cost increases that came about in the six months it took to get outside grants approved. As treasurer Mike Beal explained to councillors, when the contractor, Tantramar Electric, took a fresh look at the parts cost for the project, they found significant increases. “We all know what inflation has done,” said Beal. “The contractor of course could not hold his price for the nearly six months it took [for grant approvals].”… Continue
Burke resigns, Beal pinch hits, and Sackville barely acknowledges the change
Sackville town council met this week for their first public meeting since approving the resignation of the town’s CAO, Jamie Burke. Councillor Sabine Dietz, the human resources liaison for council, acknowledged the resignation at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting:
“Mr. Jamie Burke, CAO for the town of Sackville, gave his letter of resignation at a special meeting of council on Thursday, October 27, 2022. Council has accepted Mr. Burke’s resignation letter, and council has appointed Michael Beal as acting CAO, effective November 2, 2022 and ending on December 31, 2022.”
No further comments were offered by council members on the resignation of Burke, who has served as CAO since April 2020, and before that as the town’s manager of corporate projects for six years. The silence was in contrast to this spring, when the resignation of then town engineer Dwayne Acton garnered kind words from a number of councillors, the mayor, and then-CAO Jamie Burke.
As Dietz explained, Burke’s resignation was discussed at a special meeting of council at noon on October 27, with all of council but for Bruce Phinney and Ken Hicks in attendance, along with Jamie Burke and town clerk Donna Beal. The town’s bylaws require that the agenda for all special meetings is posted at least 48 hours in advance of a meeting “on the Town’s Webpage and through whatever other reasonable means to notify the public are available.”… Continue
Meet the candidates: Sabine Dietz, running in Ward 4 (Upper Sackville-Midgic)
Sabine Dietz was first elected to Sackville town council in May 2021, about six months before the province announced it would dissolving Sackville and creating a new, much larger town of Tantramar.
Dietz is known for asking questions during council meetings, and for her vocal opposition to the process of forced amalgamation. In her last campaign, Dietz ran as a climate change candidate, but this time she says her experience on council has taught her that she can’t be a single issue representative, and she says a big part of her job if elected will be listening to residents across Ward 4 communities, to make sure she understands their concerns.
CHMA sat down to talk with Dietz outside in the still balmy weather on November 4, 2022:
CHMA has offered to interview all candidates in all wards for the upcoming Tantramar Election. Dietz’s sole opponent in Ward 4, Matt Estabrooks, declined our request. Estabrooks explained that he has “decided to take an independent approach to getting [his] platform out this election, via social media as well as good old face to face conversation.”
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: Interview with Sabine Dietz, November 4, 2022
CHMA: For those listening who might not already know you, tell us a bit about yourself.… Continue
Town of Tantramar mayor and council would see pay increases according to provincial formula
The town of Tantramar’s mayor and council might make more money than current elected officials in Sackville.
A draft copy of a potential salary range for elected officials was circulated recently to Sackville councillors, and seems to indicate that raises are in order for Tantramar officials over their Sackville counterparts. The provincial analysis is, “aimed at providing guidance to transition leaders and community leaders,” according to another provincial document.
For towns with a population between 5,000 and 10,000, the provincial formula came up with a median salary for mayors of $22,000, and a median salary for councillors of $8,800.
Currently, the Sackville mayor makes just shy of $15,000, and councillors make about $7800.
An amalgamation advisory committee made up of elected and appointed officials will meet tonight to discuss compensation for to-be-elected officials of the town of Tantramar. Sackville Mayor Shawn Mesheau told council on Tuesday that a province-wide process would determine how much councillors and mayors get paid, and that the province was hoping to “ensure consistency with other communities of similar sizes and service levels.”
The idea of increasing the pay for councillors and/or mayor to recognize the increased workload that would come with the larger town of Tantramar was brought forward during council budget priorities discussion by Councillor Sabine Dietz.… Continue
Local governance reform minister Daniel Allain to meet privately with elected officials in Sackville Friday
Local government minister Daniel Allain is coming to Sackville town hall this Friday to meet with councillors and representatives from Sackville, Dorchester and surrounding areas, but the meeting will be closed to the public.
News of the private meeting with Allain was shared Monday night at Sackville town council’s monthly discussion meeting, after Councillor Bill Evans prompted Mayor Shawn Mesheau to mention it. The mayor had just finished his update on municipal reform without mentioning the meeting with the minister, when Evans chimed in to ask if he planned to mention it.
“Minister Allain’s office has reached out and has requested a meeting with members of council, members of Dorchester council and the other members who participate on the elected officials Advisory Committee,” replied Mesheau. “It won’t be a public meeting. It’ll be a private meeting with ministers.”
Secrecy has been a hallmark of the amalgamation process so far. Though the appointed facilitator for the process, Chad Peters, is authorized with creating a new budget and employment structure for the new Entity 40, he is not authorized to speak with media. And ever since the forced amalgamation was announced, neither Allain nor Peters has held a meeting open to citizens of the future Entity 40.
That doesn’t sit right with some town councillors.
Councillor Sabine Dietz told council on Monday that she would sit out the meeting in protest.… Continue
Sackville considers getting its first EV
The town of Sackville is getting in the electric vehicle game.
At its meeting on Monday April 11, Sackville town council will vote on a proposal to replace its bylaw enforcement vehicle, currently a 10-year-old Ford hybrid, with a fully electric car.
The move to go electric comes after a recommendation from the Mayor’s Roundtable on Climate Change in their review of Sackville’s 2022 capital budget.
Climate Change coordinator Kirsty Mrazek told council on Monday night that staff compared three different electric models in terms of price, and the Chevy Bolt EUV came in cheapest, at just under $39,000, including taxes and $10,000 in rebates from the provincial and federal governments.
The report did not include costs over the life of the vehicles, but according to CAA’s driving cost calculator, the fuel cost for the new EV will be considerably cheaper than its hybrid predecessor. For a generous 30,000 kms per year, the Chevy Bolt EUV costs about $660 in electricity, at current rates. A Ford Escape Hybrid going the same distance would rack up about $3000 in gas charges at today’s prices, according to the CAA online tool.
While staff are recommending an EV to replace the bylaw enforcement vehicle, they are not doing so for another vehicle replacement.
A twelve-year-old Ford 150 truck from the Parks and Facilities department is due for replacement, and staff are recommending a hybrid to replace it, instead of a fully electric truck.… Continue
Councillors express dismay at under-representation; ask for a single Sackville ward with reps at-large
On Thursday evening, Sackville’s municipal reform committee met for a third time, with a narrow mandate of providing input on whether Sackvillians would elect their future Entity 40 representatives at large, or in up to four separate wards.
But before they got to that question, councillors sounded off on a previous decision made by the province, to forego its own representation-by-population guidelines and allot just 50% of representatives to the former town of Sackville, which is home to 68% of the population of the new Entity 40.
Right off the bat, Councillor Allison Butcher asked Deputy Mayor Andrew Black if there was any chance of changing what she called “a skew as far as population goes?”
“No,” said Black. “That has been decided. That meeting that we had on the 15th, whatever decision was made at the end of that night with the advisory committee that was there, that decision was final.”
It’s become a theme of the municipal reform process so far: rushed decisions made in private meetings, with no substantive engagement with councils, much less the general public.
It was enough for Butcher to forego her usual attempts to put a positive spin on her comments: “At the risk of sounding really, really jaded, it probably doesn’t matter what I think should happen with the four councillors representing the 7000 people,” said Butcher, “because I’m starting to feel like it doesn’t matter what we think.”
Black told the committee that after a 1.5 hour meeting on February 15 with provincially appointed facilitator Chad Peters and the eight appointees to the provincial advisory committee, there was a consensus reached among all members, including himself and Mayor Shawn Mesheau.… Continue