When Mayor John Higham officially retires from office on Thursday, Deputy Mayor Ron Aiken’s job will get a bit more complicated.
The Deputy Mayor will be filling in on mayoral duties until a new Mayor is elected, on or before May 10 of next year.
Aiken says he plans to continue with initiatives started by Higham, such as the roundtable on climate change, the age friendly committee, and work on maintaining hospital service.
But he’s not holding any grand illusions of what the day-to-day job will be like.
“The job is, I mean, a lot of it is just small day to day stuff,” says Aiken. “In an interview John described, there’s the sort of the the plodding part of the job and then the big picture stuff. And the plodding part of the job takes up most of your time… Everything from talking to people about issues of the day to going in once a week to sign about 100 checks.
Aiken says since he’s been Depute Mayor for three years, there won’t be many surprises. “John [Higham] and I have been talking over the last two months about various things and transitioning. So I’m hoping it’s going to be fairly smooth.”
Now that there’s a majority provincial government in power, I asked Aiken what the big issues will be for Sackville. Not surprisingly, he put health care reform at the top of his list.
“That’s the one we’re most concerned about,” he says. A group of the six mayors and Deputy mayors who were involved in that attempted cuts back in February have been keeping in touch, he says.
“And now we’re looking at trying to get the process for the consultation on board. And we want a voice in what that process will look like. Not just have it dictated to us.”
Ever since the election there has been a sense among some that hospital cuts are a fait accompli, but Aiken doesn’t think they are inevitable.
“The six mayors and deputy mayors sent a questionnaire around to all the political parties during the election,” he says, “asking things like are these [cuts] off the table permanently? Should we be involved in the process to reform the healthcare system? That sort of thing. And they all responded yes to all of the questions. So they’re on record.”
Aiken says the political blowback was so bad in February that he thinks the current government might be gun shy on the issue.
Aiken says he will take the premier at his word, that he will follow through on his promise of consultations, but the concern is making sure those consultations count.
“The trick with that, is to make sure it’s not just a PR stunt,” says Aiken. “Let’s have some meaningful conversation about what we want done.”
He says he acknowledges there needs to be some sort of reform. “Things have to change a bit, because we pay a lot for health care, and apparently our outcomes are the worst in the country. So there’s things that have to change,” says Aiken.
“But their current model, which I think Allison Dysart described as a hub and spoke model, like the hubs are the big cities, and we all feed into them… Well they’re coming to Sackville for treatment from Moncton. The mayor of Rogersville told me there’s people coming down to their hospital for surgery. So that model that they trying to push, it just doesn’t work. And they won’t acknowledge it.”
Aiken says he’s heard the premier described as a “numbers guy”, and hopes he can appeal to him on that basis. “If we can present the facts and the numbers and the arguments that way, I think we might have a chance of success with it.”
Aiken believes the impetus for the proposed February service cuts came from the senior management of the health authorities, and not necessarily the political leadership of the province.
“I think the problem is with the CEOs of the health authorities. They just seem to be hide-bound to follow this particular model that’s been in the works for years. I mean, the Conservatives tried this closing the hospital, or parts to it. The liberals tried it. So this isn’t new. This has been an ongoing fight since I’ve been in Sackville.”
The other big issue Aiken expects to rear its head is municipal reform.
Premier Blaine Higgs has just appointed newly elected Moncton East MLA Daniel Allain as Minister of Local Government and Local Governance Reform.
It’s a new cabinet position, and with reform in the title its safe to say that Aiken is right: municipal reform is front of mind for Higgs and the new majority government.
There are genuine issues that need solving in the structure of local governments in New Brunswick, says Aiken. The complaint that cities and to some extent towns like Sackville make is that people who live outside of town boundaries get the services of the town without paying for them. “Their tax rates are, I don’t know, about half of what the town people pay. So there’s that kind of thing that has to be worked out,” says Aiken.
While municipal reform seems likely under the new PC majority, Aiken says the government may not like what they hear when the process begins.
“They take a lot of money from us, and we are going to start demanding it back,” he says.
The town’s double taxation on buildings that are not owner occupied goes to province, not the town, he says. And the town used to get a sizeable portion of the speeding fines for those ticketed on the TransCanada within town boundaries. It’s not necessarily a lot of revenue he says, “but this nickel and diming… taking money away affects you after a while.”
Aiken once crunched the numbers on equalization and found that the amount coming to Sackville had dropped significantly over the decades, from over $1 million in the 90’s, down to $67,000 in recent years.
“And we’ve had to make up that difference,” he says. “As I looked into the rules and how they’re calculated, it just does not make sense. There’s just no logic to how they’re doing it.”
In their 2018 campaign the Progressive Conservatives mentioned giving municipalities more power to collect tax money. Aiken is not sure that would work out much to the town’s advantage after the costs of collecting were accounted for. He says he would just like to see some of the lost revenues returned to town and municipalities.
“We’d just be happy with taking away these clawbacks that have happened over the years. If we can get that back, we’d be in great shape,” says Aiken.
By the time municipal reform is taking shape, it’s likely Sackville will have a newly elected town council.
Aiken, who plans to run for mayor in the next election, says he’s got no insider knowledge of when the province will call municipal elections, but he hopes it’s not this fall. Due to budget season, and a possible second wave of COVID, Aiken says the timing just isn’t right.
As for the immediate future, Aiken is looking forward to trading in the virtual council table for in person meetings at town hall again.
He says now that schools are back in, “we look kind of silly if weve got the kids out there side by side, and we’re not.”
He says staff have assured him there are procedures to keep things safe in council chambers, but the issue that has yet to be resolved is public participation.
“Is there just physically enough room to bring in the public and distance them? That’s something we’re going to talk about again soon, I think.”
Deputy Mayor Aiken will take over Mayoral duties starting tomorrow. Current Mayor John Higham announced his resignation last month, effective October 1, 2020.
Sackville town council next meets on October 5 for a discussion meeting, and then on October 13 for a regular council meeting.
