Josh Goguen is originally from Moncton, and has been living in Sackville with his family for the past 16 years. He’s fluently bilingual, works for Moneris in technology operations analysis, and runs one of Sackville’s community Facebook groups.
Listen to CHMA’s Meet The Candidates interview with Josh Goguen, which took place at CHMA on November 9, 2022.
Goguen is running for Ward 3, where residents will elect four councillors from a pool of nine candidates, including Goguen, Alice Cotton, Sahitya Pendurthi, Virgil Hammock, Bruce Phinney, Michael Tower, Allison Butcher, Charles Harvey, and Sana Mohammed. All candidates have interviews on CHMA, except for Charles Harvey who declined our request, and Sana Mohammed, who has yet to respond.
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:
CHMA: All right, Josh, thanks so much for coming in today. Really appreciate it.
Josh Goguen: Thank you for having me, Erica. It’s a pleasure.
CHMA: For those who might not already know you, tell us a bit about yourself.
Josh Goguen: So, my name is Josh Goguen. I am a resident of Sackville, obviously, for the last 16 years. I am married to my wonderful wife, Sarah, who works at Jean Coutu. And my son Ben is 13 years old now and he goes to Marshfield. For 15 of those 16 years, I’ve been working at Moneris in various departments. And most recently, I am a Technology Operations Analyst. I basically take care of all the backend systems. So, I make sure that everything runs smoothly.
CHMA: Okay, so your clients are the other employees at Moneris, basically. You don’t have to have the incredible patience that maybe the customer service people have to.
Josh Goguen: No, no, I did that for 10 years. And that was enough for me.
CHMA: Okay. Yeah. Well, you put in your time. So, what factored into your decision to run for this new Town of Tantramar Council?
Josh Goguen: I actually saw it as an opportunity to build upon something that a lot of people might perceive as negative. Because there’s a lot of unknowns, and we get an awesome opportunity to be able to build upon something and create something totally new. It also gives us the opportunity to kind of leave our mark on the new municipality and build upon our strengths from both Dorchester and Sackville together and even the outlying areas—Aulac and Point de Bute and all those places.
CHMA:Okay. And you’ve had a long-standing interest in municipal politics. So, you ran in May 2021 for a seat on the Sackville Council. And you also, you know, on Facebook, you have a presence there. Tell us about your group on Facebook that you manage.
Josh Goguen: Yeah, so I manage the Sackville Community Chatter page. I’ve been managing that for about two years now. And I just kind of throw all the information from the municipality and around Sackville. I did have some people question me—my integrity, basically—because they were worried that I was going to start blocking posts from other candidates and just kind of favoring myself. But no, there’s no bias, and there’s no moderation on the site. As long as it keeps the peace and everybody keeps civil, then I’m good. All other candidates and mayors, and I’ve even shared my own posts from other candidates on the site. And yeah, it’s all about getting the information out there and getting people to actually know what’s going on and get out and vote.
CHMA: Okay. All right. Now, do you have issues that you’re hoping to highlight if you’re elected, you know, what do you think are the things that you’re hoping you can bring forward to that council?
Josh Goguen: I think the biggest one is unity. Because council has always been kind of for themselves. And there’s not been a lot of unity, and everybody’s kind of fighting and whatever. So, I’m hoping that, you know, this new council, new fresh blood from even Dorchester and the LSDs, and all that, bringing a new perspective into town. And hopefully people will be able to see that within Council, and we can actually get stuff done and what needs to get done.
CHMA: Okay. I wanted to ask about, you know, one of the issues that has been cropping up more and more in the past year or so, two years really, which is housing. In your opinion, do you think the municipality should be doing something to address the housing crisis that we’re in and what kind of things do you think the municipality could be doing?
Josh Goguen: I’ve actually touched this on a couple of posts previously on my page, and I think the municipality could be doing more, even if it’s just kind of providing…this is from the last elections too—that was a hot topic back then. And I had reached out to a developer in Fredericton; he had posted that he had got a bunch of subsidized housing. Part of his apartment building had to be subsidized at a lower rate and then the rest was market rate. So how can we help these local developers kind of get around the red tape? Could we have somebody on council or on staff that could help them navigate this? Are there are bylaws or like, stuff that they’re having issues with? Why aren’t they building? Like, the Laffords are doing awesome work in Moncton; right now, they’re building the Three Sisters—the three buildings there—and then I just heard they bought the property across the street. So why are they choosing to invest in Moncton versus Sackville? Is it because Sackville has red tape? You know, it’s definitely something that needs to be looked at. And I think Council could definitely help alleviate that stress or look into seeing what’s going on.
There’s another great program down on Main Street—the co-op housing. We could look at doing something like that where kind of everybody is equal owner in their own development. When you’re an owner of something, it makes you want to take care of it more and you have pride in your places—not saying that, you know, people who are renting don’t have pride, but it kind of gives you that extra added incentive to take care of your property, you’re an equal owner, and then you’re, you know, if you damage a window or something like that, well, you know, it has to come from the community fund or whatever—you’re not, you’re kind of paying it out of pocket. So that definitely could help people.
CHMA: Right, yeah, you’re talking about the Marshwinds Co-op, right. So, when they have repairs, or they set their own rent, they don’t call it rent, but they set their own rates and they have to consider exactly all their expenses in that. So, you’re saying that’s a good model, just in terms of the sort of built-in accountability right in the model, as opposed to renters. And yeah, then they have that security.
We have also heard, you know, at CHMA, we’ve heard from readers and listeners about transparency being a key issue. And, you know, I mean, people mean different things by this. I’m curious, what’s your take on this discussion around transparency at Town Hall, openness, that sort of thing? What should the new Town do differently if anything regarding openness and transparency?
Josh Goguen: Yeah, definitely. That’s another point that I touched on. Government does have a lot of secrecy behind closed doors, what happens behind closed doors. I know Mr. Wark touched on it at last council—not the one that happened last night, but the last one—about the Montana Report, that it wasn’t made public. And I do understand that there are some things that Council does have limits on making public. But whatever information you can share, it should be out there. A lot of people don’t read the newspaper anymore because it’s just…. We all get our media as it comes: online, on radio. So why not share that information with the community? So, you could have like a page devoted to this is what happened last Council meeting, this is what we’re free to share. You know, because there are legal ramifications that if you divulge information that has to do with HR, well, then you know, you could get in trouble. Definitely within what we’re legally able to share is what my mission will be to share with everybody. And I’ve always made it clear that as much as I can share, and that’s what I will do.
CHMA: So not so much changes in the rules around sharing, but more, you want to see sort of more active sharing of the information that is already available.
Josh Goguen: Absolutely. Yep.
CHMA: Let’s talk a bit about amalgamation. I’ve been asking candidates to give me their best and worst. So, what’s something you’re excited about under this new amalgamated municipality, and also what’s something you think is going to be a big challenge?
Josh Goguen: So, the biggest thing that I’m actually excited about is bringing everybody from this area together. For years, I understand that you choose to move to Wood Point or Aulac because the tax base is less and you know, you enjoy the country living. But this is an awesome opportunity to be able to bring people from outside our little town of Sackville and Dorchester and have them have input at the table on what we’re doing, in what directions we’re going, because Sackville could have a certain thing, and there might be a requirement for Aulac that they want to have a walking trail or something like that. So as people have more representation over Megan Mitton, that just represents Tantramar itself. They have somebody else to bring their concerns to if there’s a road being overlooked or something like that. It definitely will bring a lot more representation to the area, to the underserved population. I’m definitely most excited about that.
CHMA: Okay. Now for challenges, what do you think? Are they going to be the challenges? Are there any concerns? I mean, do you think that there’s going to be, you know, we know there’s added expenses that are going to be, you know, there’s some downloaded things from the province. We have more money to pay to regional service commissions. Yeah, there’s two sides to look at on everything, I guess. What are your concerns? What do you think are going to be the hardest?
Josh Goguen: I think the biggest part is going to be getting that buy-in from the LSDs because, for years, they’ve just kind of been left on their own and to fend for themselves. And we’re bringing in a representation but also with that, some services, like you said, are going to be downloaded onto the municipality. And in terms, we need to pay for that. How do you set a kind of equal playing field for people in Sackville that are paying a higher tax rate versus people in Aulac that are paying a lower rate? I think that’s going to be a fine line—just getting that buy-in from people.
CHMA: I mean, basically setting those rates, which you won’t have to do in 2023, which I’m sure you’re happy about. In 2024 and beyond, this council will be dealing with that.
Josh Goguen: Absolutely, yeah. I think the first year, we’re going to have our hands tied very much with a lot of other things. It’s awesome that the provinces are kind of going to be doing our budget and stuff like that. I know, we’ve kind of set what we would like to do. And they’re going to kind of take care of that stuff. And we can focus on the important things of building the municipality, getting everybody to the table, and, you know, getting everybody excited about this and hopefully see it as a positive instead of a negative.
CHMA: Okay. Alright, Josh, is there anything else you want people in Ward 3 to know? Any other things you want to highlight?
Josh Goguen: So, you say Ward 3. I know a lot of people have been used to just councillors-at-large, and you’re representing that whole municipality. Although I’ll be only able to be voted by people in Ward 3, I’ll be representing everybody. And I know that sounds like…everybody says that. But it’s true. I want to have everybody’s interest in not just my ward, I want to hear concerns from other people. Because the bigger voice that you have, the more can get done locally. And if somebody from Wood Point has a concern with their roads or something like that, they can come to me, and I’ll gladly answer any questions or bring them up to council.
CHMA: Are there any other issues you wanted to mention, Josh?
Josh Goguen: I think the big one for a municipality too is healthcare. Our Sackville hospital has kind of been suffering. And I did watch our last Council meeting and they had a great report from the group committee that has been struck up with citizens…
CHMA: The Rural Health Action Group…
Josh Goguen: Yes, yes, that’s it. And they were mentioning that they’d like to…they are getting overworked and stuff like that. And they’d like to take a step back. And I think it’s important as a municipality that we keep on this initiative because it’s putting pressure on the hospital to say, “hey, we’re still here. And we want these services” and obviously, it has worked. So, I’d like to see Town Council kind of put in either a paid position, or a part time position, or add on to somebody else’s duties to steer a committee or something like that that would be made up of council, citizens of the town, and the hospital that would say, “Okay, this is where we’re at, this is our progress. This is what we need.”
And then you know, they were going out to St. Andrews to do the recruitment drive for the doctors and stuff like that. I want to see more of that and promote our area as the place you want to be. Originally, I’m from Moncton and my wife was born and raised in Sackville. And when we first got together, we started talking about quality of life. And she wanted to raise her child or children in Sackville, and I want to stay Moncton because that’s what I knew. But then when I moved to Sackville, I started understanding why she wanted to stay here. So, we need to build on why Sackville is so great, and our culture, you know, arts and culture and all that stuff, and basically showcase that this is the place that you want to be and this is a place you want to stay at.
CHMA: All right, thank you so much for coming in today, Josh, I really appreciate it. Best of luck in your campaign and the election.
Josh Goguen: Yes, thank you for taking the time.
