The town of Sackville has released the province’s proposed ward map outlining the boundaries of eight wards to be used to elect a new Entity 40 council in November.
An advisory committee, made up of eight people appointed to represent different parts of the new Entity 40, met privately with provincial facilitator Chad Peters for a second time on Monday, and the map was released the next day, on Tuesday.
The draft map is due to be discussed at a meeting of Sackville’s municipal reform committee on Thursday at 6pm.
Last week, advisory committee member and Sackville mayor Shawn Mesheau said he expected Peters to bring back options for ward boundaries which would be shared with the public, and that a final decision would be made by March 4. But on Tuesday there was just a single draft map of eight wards published on the town of Sackville website.
The wards vary widely in population size from 375 electors to 1240 electors, a spread which runs counter to the guidelines circulated by the provincial department of local government.
The town of Sackville website says the wards are “largely set,” though notes, “there will be some slight tweaks to them to correct any mapping errors and issues.”
However the website also says the committee’s next step is “to determine the number of wards in Sackville.”
It’s not totally clear, but it seems that four wards mostly outside current town limits are set, and the wards completely within Sackville are not. Mesheau was not available for an interview Tuesday evening, but said via email that the town of Sackville could still have 1, 2, 3 or 4 wards, as he had previously explained.
The map presents another point of confusion, however, since the proposed new wards do not correspond with the current town of Sackville boundary. Part of the existing town of Sackville is included in a ward covering the Village of Dorchester and Dorchester Local Service District (LSD). Another, much larger section of the town, which includes Hesler, Crossman and Fairfield Roads, is included in a ward that stretches southward to encompass the Rockport peninsula.
Then there are four wards completely enclosed within the current town boundary. There’s a Middle Sackville ward, encompassing all of the town to the north of the Transcanada Highway. On the south side of the highway, there’s two wards on either side of Bridge and York Streets, and then a third ward to the west of Salem Street, stretching up to Pringle and Crossman Roads.
The two remaining wards are the smallest in population. The Point de Bute ward has 415 electors and the Midgic ward, which stretches all the way north to Beaubassin East, has 375 electors, less than a third the size of the Middle Sackville ward, which is slated to have 1240 electors.
Guidelines on the setting of ward boundaries written and distributed by the department of local government recommend that all wards are within a maximum of 15% deviation from the average size, which in Entity 40 is about 843 electors. The guidelines are based on the law the governs New Brunswick provincial elections ridings, which allows for deviations of up to 25% under exceptional circumstances, such as the protection of a specific community of interest or a language minority. The province’s proposed map includes wards with much larger deviations in both directions.
The provincially appointed advisory committee will meet again privately with Chad Peters to finalize the ward boundaries, and that will happen by March 4, three days before the next Sackville town council meeting. But a committee of council will meet this week to discuss the proposal publicly. This Thursday at 6pm, town council’s municipal reform committee will hold its third meeting online. Deputy Mayor Andrew Black is chairing the committee, and he also sits on the closed advisory committee to Chad Peters, along with Mayor Mesheau and six other representatives.
The past two meetings of the council committee, which has no formal power in the reform process, have included lively debate, and its expected that will continue on Thursday.
The link to join the meeting is here. The town of Sackville information page on municipal reform is here.
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