Council roundup: budget 2024 approved, air filter project turned down, and councillor censured
Budget passes, shared services calculations to be reviewed
Tantramar council passed a number of budget resolutions this week, setting capital and operating budget spending as well as tax rates for the municipality.
2024 tax rates for Tantramar, per $1000 of assessed property value
- Former town of Sackville: 1.5389 (down 0.0095 from last year)
- Former village of Dorchester: 1.5415 (down 0.0225 from last year)
- Former Sackville LSD: 0.5625 (0.974 w/ provincial portion, up 0.05 from last year)
- Former Point de Bute LSD: 0.7637 (1.1752 w/ provincial portion, up 0.05 from last year)
- Former Dorchester LSD: 0.6411 (1.0526 w/ provincial portion, up 0.05 from last year)
The slew of motions also included one that commits council to reviewing how it divvies up the fiscal responsibility for some of the services that are deemed ‘shared’. As treasurer Michael Beal explained to council, when the cost of running the municipality is allocated to the different areas, the share covered by former Local Service Districts (LSDs) is calculated at 90 percent, a decision made by the provincial consultant who was hired to create Tantramar’s first budget.
“The shared service model says that as you go further from the central core services, the local service districts should pay less for some of those shared services. The 90% was chosen by the province, and we don’t know why that was chosen,” said Beal.… Continue
‘A bit of a bumpy start’ as EV drivers welcome new Sackville fast charger
Downtown Sackville has a new fast EV charger. The FLO brand charger which is connected to NB Power’s eCharge network went live on September 21 in the parking lot between the post office and Goya’s Pizza in downtown Sackville. About 25 different EVs have successfully charge since then, says Corporate Services Director Kieran Miller. Unfortunately, roughly 25 other potential users were unable to connect to the charger. Miller says the project has “had a bit of bumpy start” with reported errors from some users, but the town is “working with FLO to get those issues resolved.”
“It’s a bit of a mix of people having an issue versus people being able to successfully charge,” says Miller. “It’s definitely new technology for us, so there’ll be some growing pains as we onboard it.” Miller says she hopes users will be patient, and inform the town if they encounter any issues.
People connecting to the charger will pay for their charge through the NB Power eCharge network, but the charger is owned by Tantramar, and so net revenue, after covering the cost of the power, will come to the town. Tantramar set the rate at $15 per hour of charging, the same rate used at other eCharge network chargers.
Miller says that usage data available to the town doesn’t show where drivers are coming from, but at least one of the potential users is a local EV owner who met with CHMA downtown to talk about the charger and his experience owning an EV:
Sackville resident Lucas Morneau has owned his EV since 2022, and unlike many EV owners, does not have his own home charger, instead relying on public charging networks including DC fast chargers like the one just installed downtown, and level 2 chargers like the one Sackville installed at the Visitor Information Centre (VIC) in 2014.… Continue