On today’s CHMA daily news:
- Mount Allison lays off or reduces hours for 50 people;
- Sackville’s economic recovery fund no-go for July;
- Public health tries to ramp up testing in New Brusnwick;
- Amherst goes with electronic voting for October;
- Amherst residents to weigh in on fluoridation of their water;
- and the COVID numbers update.
TRANSCRIPT:
The province reported one new case of COVID-19 yesterday.
Someone in their 50’s from the Southeast region tested positive while self isolating after travelling outside the province.
More people have recovered from the disease, leaving 20 active cases in New Brunswick.
Two people are in hospital, one in intensive care.
In Nova Scotia, officials marked two weeks with no new cases of COVID-19, and no active cases.
Mount Allison has sent layoff or reduced hours notices to 50 staff people at the university.
The 50 staff affected include people from facilities management and secretarial, clerical, and technical union locals, as well as non-unionized workers.
Some workers have been issued a recall date, while others have not.
Mount Allison President Jean Paul Boudreau informed faculty and staff of the move in a letter sent last week.
Boudreau’s letter said that the combined factors of increased COVID-related cleaning and technology expenses and reduced enrolment leave the university with projected budget deficits of $7 million to $9 million.
The letter also said Boudreau and the vice-presidents of the university have volunteered a reduction in salary.
Non-union administrative workers will also forego a cost of living increase normally scheduled for July 1st.
The Mount Allison Faculty Association has yet to make a formal statement on the layoffs, though some professors were expressing dismay and concern that the layoffs might not be necessary on social media.
One professor wrote, “there are many of us who don’t believe we are in the type of crisis that would warrant such measures.”
Emily Shaw is a Mount Allison student who has created an online event to protest the staff cuts.
Shaw says, “COVID-19 has been used as an excuse to cut positions without further discussing it with the departments, faculty, and students it’s going to effect the most.”
In an emailed statement, Shaw said she is frustrated considering the efforts of students and faculty this February to protest cuts to part-time faculty.
Shaw is also upset that students were not informed directly of the cut, instead hearing it second hand from professors and staff online.
Shaw created a Facebook event called “Students and Alumni Against Mount Allison Layoffs” to encourage people to email their thoughts to Mount Allison senior administrators and the Board of Regents.
CAO Jamie Burke says staff will not be presenting a plan for an economic recovery fund to council at their July meeting.
On Monday evening, councillors heard reports from staff that there is a projected surplus of just over $130,000 in the town’s current budget year.
CAO Jamie Burke presented council with a list of options to pursue that could provide support for COVID-related expenses being taken on by local businesses.
But after a 30-minute discussion, no clear leadership on the question emerged, and Mayor John Higham turned the question back to staff.
Click to listen:
“I think what we’re doing is turning it back to staff for any ideas on what you think you might be able to distill from this. And we’ll see whether you come back with something or whether you say no, I don’t think council’s ready for this.”
Jamie Burke confirmed in an email that economic recovery funding will not be further discussed at July’s council meeting.
Burke instead is taking direction coming from Councillor Mike Tower, who had suggested a survey to find out the specific need of local businesses.
Burke says the town will revisit things after that.
One local businessman says he is disappointed in council’s handling of the question, and worries that councillors don’t understand how severely the pandemic is affecting small businesses.
Alan Barbour recently opened Fridgee, an online grocery store, after closing his cafe, The Black Duck, due to the pandemic shutdown.
Click to listen:
“It was really–from a business owner’s perspective, and the small business owner’s perspective–it was super disappointing. You have a group of councillors who seem oblivious to the fact that small businesses in a small town are suffering worse than they have in anyone’s lifetime.”
Barbour says town staff have recently started to become engaged with local businesspeople, but points out that Monday’s discussion was the first consideration of economic recovery in the three months since the shutdown.
Click to listen:
“It’s amazing that this pandemic is going on for as long as it has, and this is the first time economic recovery has been brought up in a town council setting. Like this has been going on, on a federal level and on a provincial level, in most provinces. New Brunswick has done, I would say, as close to zero as possible for small businesses. Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia have done a lot more. And on a municipal level, we haven’t really even… we just started having the conversation yesterday and the conversation was shut down at the first meeting.”
Barbour says that concerns raised by councillors over being on the hook for choosing which businesses receive support are unfounded.
He points out that two existing Sackville organizations, Renaissance Sackville and Mainstreet Sackville, already exist to support local organizations and businesses.
Though the town’s surplus is projected at $130,000, on Monday Jamie Burke gave numbers in the neighbourhood of $25 or $50,000 as possible fund envelopes.
Some of the ideas for the fund included supporting the purchase of PPE equipment, the setting up of online commerce, or pandemic related renovations.
Barbour hopes councillors will consider any type of support for local businesses suffering from the new pandemic reality.
Click to listen:
“Just if they did anything it would be better than doing absolutely nothing. But, you know, what I think would be helpful at this point in time would be to set up a fund. The town could seed the fund and then an organization around that could be used to try to find other money for the fund, to give out micro grants and micro loans to small businesses to help them pivot. So this is being done in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island through sort of like restart grants, restart loans, to help, you know, with if you need to put in barriers or if you need to hire someone to build you a Shopify store, or if you need to put a takeout window in where your door used to be. Like just these small things that are unique to every business. But it’s hard right now for people to access the funds to do that, especially on the small business side, because a lot of small businesses are, the owners are actually working way harder than they have been in the past way longer hours to make way less money, if not to lose money.”
That was local Sackville businessperson Al Barbour.
Sackville Town Council meets next on July 6th.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Jennifer Russell recently announced an increase in testing across the province, allowing testing for anyone experiencing ONE of the symptoms from the list, including:
- fever or signs of fever, such as chills;
- a new cough or worsening chronic cough;
- sore throat;
- runny nose;
- headache;
- a new onset of fatigue or muscle pain;
- diarrhea;
- loss of sense of taste or loss of sense of smell;
- and in children, purple markings on the fingers or toes.
Russell says asymptomatic testing is still off the table, for the most part.
Click to listen:
“We do have pressure from different organizations at times to test asymptomatic people. And we have very, very special conditions under which we will test people that do not have symptoms. And again, we just want to be careful around that because we know the evidence around testing asymptomatic people is tricky with respect to how it influences the interpretation of the results. So in order to really be confident in our results, we are lowering the number of required symptoms to one. Again to make sure that we’re not missing anybody. And we want to confirm that there is an absence of community spread out there at this moment in time. So it’s giving us a level of confidence. But it also again gives confidence to the population in all communities, that the testing is available for them when and if they need it.”
New Brunswick has conducted 2989 tests over the past 7 days.
The number of daily tests has been dropping though, with only 169 results reported Tuesday, the lowest number in over a month.
Amherst citizens will be voting electronically in the next municipal election slated for Oct. 17th.
Amherst town council made the decision based on the idea that social distancing could not be guaranteed if traditional paper ballots and polling stations were used.
People will be able to use a computer, tablet, mobile device or telephone to cast their ballot between noon on Oct. 5, 2020, and the close of polls on Oct. 17, 2020.
The council was told a fully electronic election is estimated to save between $20,000 and $25,000, with the majority of savings coming from not having to pay poll workers’ salaries and benefits or renting halls.
Staff also noted the town will not have to purchase about $5,000 in protective equipment – gloves, masks and sanitizer – that would have been required if traditional polling stations were used.
And Amherst residents will have an extra question on their ballots for this October’s municipal election.
Amherst Council approved a plebiscite that asks voters, “Should the Amherst Water Utility fluoridate the municipal drinking water supply? Yes or No?”
In addition, council approved sending the same question to all water utility customers located in the Municipality of the County of Cumberland in the July 2020 water bills.
The question will be accompanied by a stamped return envelope.
Councillors noted that although the plebiscite and survey will be non-binding, they will give Amherst residents and water users an opportunity to have their say on the fluoridation of the drinking supply.
CHMA Daily News is hosted Mahalia Thompson-Onichino, and produced by Erica Butler, with contributions from Bruce Wark, Geoff de Gannes, and James Anderson.
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