Robert Corkerton has been serving as a councillor for the Village of Dorchester for going on 16 years now, and is currently Deputy Mayor for the village. Corkerton says he has the experience to help steer Tantramar into the first few years of amalgamation, and that he’s not running on specific issues, but rather on his record as a Village councillor so far. In an interview with CHMA, Corkerton talks about his work on the amalgamation advisory committee, the future of services like fire and police, taxes, and recreation.
Listen to CHMA’s Meet The Candidates interview with Robert Corkerton, which took place November 1, 2022, at CHMA studios:
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TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: First of all, welcome, Robert, thanks for coming.
Robert Corkerton: Well, thank you for having me here. It’s great to be here.
CHMA: Just to start off, tell me a bit about yourself.
RC: I’m a resident of Dorchester and have been for the past 20 years. I moved to Dorchester from Montreal. I’m originally from England. I live in Dorchester with my wife and I have four kids, three who attend Tantramar at the moment, and one who’s still in Dorchester.
CHMA: And you have some experience on the [Dorchester] Village Council.
RC: I am in my 16th year on council. I was first elected in 2007 in a by-election, and then in subsequent elections since then, I’ve gotten in by acclamation a couple of times, and then been voted in by the population a few other times.
CHMA: Okay. So let me ask what made you decide to run again? I mean, it’s kind of again, but it’s also like a brand new thing, because now it’s the Tantramar Council. So what were the thoughts behind deciding to run this time?
RC: So there’s been a lot of thoughts about it. It’s not been an easy or quick decision. So I’ve been thinking about it since the White Paper [on local government reform] came out, so last November. So it’s been a year now.
So as to what would be involved in the amalgamation and what goes into it. And so knowing the difficulties that there is, of moving into the new town of Tantramar, as it will be called, looking at the difficulties there will be adjusting from what we’ve had, to what it will be.
I was looking at it saying I know what it’s going to take, I know what’s going to be involved. I had to think about it for a while, a long time. So I was thinking about it before I finally made a decision that yes, I want to step forward and to put my put my name forward on the ballot, because of my experience, because I know what it’s going to be going in.
Being a first time councillor can be difficult. Even in the village, like it was hard for first year people on council, because you’ve got to learn all the ins and outs of how everything works. Going into this is going to be completely different than even what Sackville has been used to, or what Dorchester has been used to. It’s going to be different because it’s such a larger area. People will be looking at different things. In some cases, duplication of things that we’ve had going on. So we have two water systems, we have three fire stations. So like there’s going to be lots of things that are different. But I understand how the politics of it and how the mechanism is supposed to work. So for me, it’s like, yes, I want to put myself forward, because I had that experience to be able to be there to deal with the difficulties, understanding what the difficulties are and saying, ‘Okay, how do we get through them?’
CHMA: And we should say, in addition to your position on the village council, you’re also involved in the Elected Officials Advisory Committee that was helping make some decisions throughout this process? How was that experience?
RC: It was actually reasonably good. So I know, at first we were a little tentative, and so how that was going to happen. From what we had been told it was going to be a transition team that was coming in, so to deal with things, and it ended up being just a transition facilitator.
CHMA: You were the team, actually.
RC: We ended up being the team, the elected officials and people from the LSDs. We made a lot of decisions, not all. We made some of the decisions that needed to be made as a consensus. And so it actually worked out reasonably well. Yes, there was a lot of discussion back and forth. But none of the decisions were made by the facilitator, even though he was tasked to make those if we couldn’t come to a consensus. We came to consensus basically on everything we had to decide on, which was good.
And we had those good discussion back and forth about, okay, what’s your thought on this? And everybody got to share. And so we were able to make consensus on all of it.
So it was a good process. It wasn’t our choosing of the process. But what we were given, we worked well at it as a group to be able to make some decisions. And so time will tell whether or not those are decisions that will last. But we made decisions as we best we could for the start.
CHMA: Right. Well, let me open up this question to you. What are the issues that you’re hoping to highlight in your campaign? You’re focused on Ward 1. Have you narrowed down what are your sort of main issues that you’d like to bring to people, if you’re talking to people door to door and that sort of thing?
RC: My campaign is not going to be based on issues, it’s based on me. I want to present who I am. Yes, there are lots of issues. I can do a grocery list of issues which will be different for everybody. So am I able to talk on some of those? Yes. But myself, but I don’t want to sell you on what those lists will be. I want to sell you on who I am, and what I’ve done on, and what I can bring.
So yes, we can look at all of the key ones, as everybody’s been talking about housing, and the hospital and roads, we can talk about that. Am I going to solve all those problems? No. That’s not what I’m putting myself forward to do. I want to be part of the equation to find the answers. But I’m not going to tell you that I’m going to be able to find those answers. So I’m not running on this issue or that issue. For ward 1, yes, I can look at things that sort of concern us, but I’m also looking at sort of what concerns everybody.
CHMA: Let me ask, do you think that there’s going to be specific challenges for people in Ward one, in terms of being under a new amalgamated municipality? Like, you mentioned that there’s three fire departments, two water systems? In terms of what you’re looking at in the next few years, the decision-making around the new bureaucracy… What do you think people have to worry about mostly in Ward 1?
RC: So now it’s been a concern for years, the cost of water. So not the quality of water, for some people its an issue because they don’t like chlorine, but can do anything about that. But the cost, the cost to maintain the system, that’s an issue that will constantly be there. And so especially as we know, we have to invest into the infrastructure. So because some of the infrastructure, the piping, is sixty years old, within the village. And so there’s a new lift station that needs to go in. And so we’re looking at projects, we’re looking at a million or $2 million to be able to do it. And so there’s costs related to that. So there’s infrastructure costs, the way the system seems to be set up at this point, we’ll find out in the future, that will all rely on specifically those who are in the village of Dorchester. So even people in Ward 1 who are outside the village, who don’t have that water, wouldn’t have that specific concern.
CHMA: That’s the same as Sackville. And people often have that misconception actually, let’s clarify that. Your water bill is different than your tax bill. Your property tax bill funds a municipality and your water bill is what funds your water utility. So you’re saying Dorchester is looking at increased costs…
RC: There’s going to be increased costs on the utility side. There’s the general side and the utility side. The property taxes deal with the general side, and utilities specifically water and sewer. And so the water and sewer bills, what’s that going to look like in the future? We don’t know. Because we know those infrastructure costs are going to come.
And we know that there are people who live just outside of what is now the municipalities, so outside Dorchester and probably outside of Sackville, who are looking and thinking I’d love to get onto water and sewer. So that’s gonna be another thing to look at, not just for us in Ward 1, but as the town of Tantramar, we’re gonna have to look at where do we go from here? What’s the infrastructure going to look like? So do we look to move that out further than what it is presently? Because we know there’s people who would love to be on water and not have to worry about wells and septic tanks and they’d love to make that move. So these are structural sort of infrastructure things which will lead into many questions, and so we’ll deal with any costing in that.
CHMA: I know some people have expressed concern about the fire services and police services do you see big changes there or status quo? What do you think?
RC: So fire services is status quo. There will remain to be three fire departments across cost Tantramar. So, each of the Dorchester, Sackville and Point de Bute fire departments will remain. So they will have their own individual budgets same as they’ve had. There will be a reporting structure, I think they will be reporting directly to the CAO. They might report to another manager. But so as far as I know, that’s what it is.
There’s no big changes coming into the fire department least not at the moment, because the province is coming out with a regionalized plan in 2025, which will change… I don’t think it’ll change everything in the fire department, how they work. It will change structurally how they might work together, or might work with other other areas.
CHMA: So if there’s going to be amalgamations of fire departments, it’s going to happen in 2025.
RC: It’ll be 2025. That will be the province that comes to that. It has nothing to do with this amalgamation. And if they look at it regionally, I’m not sure how they would even… how they would be eliminating a fire department? Because of where each of the three departments are situated… They’re covering a wide section. And if you eliminate one, the other Fire Department, unless they doubled in size, there’s no way they can cover those areas. And so the time delays to go… If you get rid of Dorchester, to be able to respond to the penitentiary or to Rockport or going the other way if you had just had the Sackville one… How do you not put somebody in a dire area, because of fire coverage? So we have the three because we need the three.
Policing, that’s always an issue. Visibility, for the village and the LSDs, we question whether or not they’re there. We do see them, but what they’re actually doing besides driving through, we don’t know. It’s always been referred to as drive-through policing. So we know the town of Sackville has a contract. And so they got a municipal contract, whereas everybody else is on the provincial contract. And we know that nothing’s happening for 2023. We’re looking 2024, 2025 before anything, structurally, financial-wise, can come into effect. Just because we’ve to look at what do we need, and then we’ve got to go talk to the RCMP and see how does this work? And it’s also the province because it’s a provincial contract with the RCMP.
And because now everybody is inside the municipality, how do we have a provincial contract for municipal policing, even if it is done over a wide range? So the policing is not going to change for the time being, but there’s going to be interesting discussions over the next year, year and a half.
CHMA: That should be a big discussion topic under your tenure if you’re elected.
RC: Oh, yes, most definitely. It’s definitely something that needs to be looked at, and I know that the discussion has already started, in the sense I was already in meetings a few months back with the RCMP with the town of Sackville and the village of Dorchester to discuss what is it we’ve got? So not so much is where we’re going, because it was just a preliminary meeting to say, ‘Okay, this is where we are. How do we move forward?’
So like I said, right now it’s status quo. But let’s have the discussion so we can work out what the needs are for the new municipality that we’re in. So that us and the RCMP are on the same page that when we get the province involved, it can all work together so we can do it for the benefit of everybody.
CHMA: I want to ask you a bit about taxes. Dorchester’s tax rate is very close to Sackville’s.
RC: Less than one cent away…
CHMA: And so there might not be too much surprise for people in the former village, based on whatever rate gets proposed, or gets assigned, I guess, by the province. But outside the village, there’s a potential there for some disruption or some change. We have also seen some extra costs coming in to the municipalities that were not there before. Even while the elected officials salaries are going to be going up. It’s an extra $100,000, there. The Regional Service Commission, their starter budget looks like it’s going to cost the municipality about $50,000. That’s just before they even do anything in those departments. So there’s gonna be new costs coming at these new municipalities all across the province. Do you foresee the rates outside the village and the town, the former village and town, are going to have to go up?
RC: I can see it happening because I’ve seen some of the information. I don’t know what the rate is going to be. I haven’t got that information. There will be increases, to what extent I don’t know. The LSD areas are becoming part of the Tantramar, so there are shared costs which would be for everybody. So there will be some move there
For 2023 there will be five different tax rates. Five different tax rates within the municipality because of the five different regions, because there’s five different sort of taxing bodies.
There will be increases, probably more than likely in the LSDs. Now I think I believe it is capped as to how much an increase it can be on any given year. And I know from having read the legislation, that there is I think it’s a 10 year time limit to be able to get those into one tax rate or one functioning system. They didn’t specify in the legislation how they want it. It’s going to be based on the services you receive. So there’s going to be general services, and then there’ll be specific things which are for each area.
CHMA: So right now we’ll keep tax rates around the former municipal boundaries, but there will be different tax rates in a new system, which is again, something I’m assuming you will be, if elected, involved in deciding, is that right?
RC: We will be involved in the sense of we’ll be putting budgets together. It’s all based on what is needed in the different areas. So for Ward 1, I would be bringing forward things we would like to have specifically for Ward 1. There’s certain costs none of us have any control over, insurance, specific employee costs. So those structural costs we don’t have any control over as council. We’ve never had control over it.
Over the years yes, I’ve done a wish list of things I’d like to see done. I put them forward with costs, some of them make the budget, some of them don’t. Because you want to try and get other things done besides the basic things.
We will have more to say in the wider areas because we’ll be putting the budget together. This year is going to be unusual because of the fact that there’s five different tax rates and I think, essentially five different budgets. You’ve got the main budget and then you’ve got splinter budgets for the different former municipalities. Looking at is all it’s like a big headache. It’s a jigsaw puzzle, you’ve got to try and put it all together.
CHMA: So that’s 2023, which is, you know, essentially you’re going to be handed whatever that is. Let’s look forward to 2024 and beyond, and what do you see as making sense into sort of how we organize tax rates? And that sort of thing? Assuming you have some flexibility to say, well, we’re gonna have this one rate for, you know, areas with a certain density or with certain services, and another rate for another area, agricultural land or something like that. Have you thought about how that might be organized?
RC: It’ll depend on how, because the government is supposedly still looking at tax reform and how that’s being processed… So I can foresee in the next couple of years, we might, hopefully get down to two tax rates. Because the current municipalities are so close, that difference would sort of be eliminated and there’ll be one tax rate for the “urban” areas, you can say. So the village and town would become one tax rate. And then hopefully LSDs would then move into, with similar costing, they would then be one [tax rate].
And then we’ll see from there. Depending on how the province gives us tax flexibility, however they do the tax reform… We could say this is gonna be a standard rate for the municipality. This is the base. And then because you live in this area, you’re getting these extra services, you’re getting these specific services, then that gets an add-on to make that rate.
So we’ll go from five, hopefully down to two, hopefully down to one as a base. But then with the flexibility of being able to say, okay, yes, I’m not expecting to pay the same rate as I do on Woodlawn in Dorchester, for somebody out in Point de Bute, who doesn’t have the same sort of access to the same services.
Yes, there’s gonna be some services we all pay for, because we all receive the same services. But am I expecting them to pay exactly the same? No.
CHMA: What are you most looking forward to about this new municipal structure? And what do you think will be sort of the biggest challenge to overcome? Let’s do like a best and worst kind of thing.
RC: Start with the best… the best is going to be being able to look at the whole of what will be the town of Tantramar.
At the moment, I’ve looked at what I’ve got within my municipal bounds. And there’s things I would have loved to have done, but I couldn’t because they were outside of the municipal boundaries.
CHMA: Can you give have an example of something like that?
RC: The Trans Canada Trail. For years, I was going to meetings with people from the Trans Canada trails, about where we put the trail through Dorchester. And for years, I was going to these meetings and sort of giving them my input. And so we’d love to see the trail come through Dorchester. There’s great spots to do it. But I can only give you verbal support, because of the limitations of the village of Dorchester.
So looking at the dikes we have round there, it would be great to run down there and then down towards the Nature Conservancy for the birds and that down there. It would be a great thing.
I can say this is where you should go. But I can’t help you with it. Because I didn’t have any political power. That was the province taking care of that, so I can direct you that way but you’ve got to go do the work.
Now with the town of Tantramar we can look at the wider thing. That’s now all part of what we’re looking at. We’re looking at what’s in Dorchester, we can look at what’s in Point de Bute. We can look at all what we’ve got out Midgic and Cookville. And we can look at what the gems are out there and make sure that everybody within the town of Tantramar is aware of what’s going on. So we know about our own little corners. But we’ve now got a much wider corner to look at. And we should be looking at it and saying, Okay, what can we do to help improve that? Because if I help improve that over there, it’s going to help me over here. The gems that we have available throughout the town is limitless. So we have great businesses, we have great farms, we have great ecological areas. We need to work together, to be able to make that a good thing. So we didn’t have that opportunity before because we were limited to our own little areas.
CHMA: Alright, so that’s the best. Now what about the worst, what is going to be the biggest challenge or the biggest hurdle, especially for people in Ward 1?
RC: One of the biggest challenges for people in Ward 1 will be feeling that they are being heard. I’ve heard it for months now, that we’re being annexed by Sackville. And that’s going to be the biggest challenge to the people in Ward 1, is to feel that, no, they’re not being annexed, they are becoming part of the town of Tantramar. So the fear or the concern is Sackville is going to take over. We’re going to lose everything. We’re going to lose our services. And Sackville will be in charge of everything. And we won’t have the same say, as we had before. And we will lose all those services. So that’s going to be the the biggest challenge is, is making sure that it doesn’t happen that way. And then making sure everybody’s aware that is not what’s happening. That’s not the intention. And if it does, if you feel that it is that way, let me know. Let’s see what we can do to correct that. Because that’s not the intention. That wouldn’t be what I’d want.
We want to make sure we maintain our services, we maintain our library, we retain our school. Some of these things don’t have anything to do with the amalgamation but the fear is we’re gonna lose the school, we’re gonna lose the post office, we’re gonna lose our libraries. Because those things already exist in Sackville.
CHMA: And also the argument around amalgamation often is, or the one of the pros, is that there’s going to be some sort of cost savings. And so far, there’s no cost savings. And the only cost savings come from cut services. So I guess people are just waiting for that to drop?
RC: Yeah. So the province has said this is going to be a cost saving measure.
CHMA: Do you think it’s been a cost saving measure?
RC: For the province? Yes. For the municipalities? No.
For them, they can legitimately and honestly say it’s a cost saving measure because yes, for the province, it is. For municipalities, is there gonna be a cost saving? Not at the moment. Down the road? Yes, it may be there may be savings down the road. But for the next few years, no.
It’s not gonna be any cost savings until we can work out all the details on how things will work. So looking at snowplowing… is there gonna be cost savings around that? Possibly. Because we have individual contracts, and now can go for a larger contract, So yes, there’s going to be some cost savings there. So when we order our paper from Staples, or whoever you order paper from, because it’s a larger entity naturally… Everybody knows the more you order generally the price comes down.
So yes, there’s gonna be some cost savings. Is it going to be significant, like all of a sudden all our tax rates are gonna drop in half because of it? We’re not gonna see a 10 cent decrease in the taxes because of the cost savings because of amalgamation.
So it’s now a question of looking at yes, we’re amalgamating but now the services we have now have to spread over a larger area which means generally you have to hire more people. So like our public works… We have public works in Sackville, we have public works in Dorchester. Well, the LSD areas haven’t had public works. So now the Public Works people we presently have in the two municipalities become one and we’ve now got a cover a municipality double the size. So there’s going to be increased costs related to that.
CHMA: I’ve noticed in Dorchester, you know, a lot of festivals and like, recreation things, there’s a lot of stuff there that’s happening that is not necessarily controlled by the village. Whereas in Sackville tends to be sort of orchestrated by the town’s recreation department. So while there’s a lot happening in Dorchester, it’s not really coming out of the village necessarily, right. There’s a lot of volunteer committees. I mean, I thinking of the festivals, specifically like the Shire town festival, right?
RC: So the Shiretown festival, actually, stopped being run by the village a few years back. It came down to the finances. And we selected one festival. It was the Sandpiper Festival. So yes, Shiretown has come back in the last two years, and it’s being run by an outside committee.
And that’s what it’s going to need to be, not just for Dorchester, but for probably everywhere. So it can’t be the municipality that’s running it, it really shouldn’t be. So I’m not saying the municipality couldn’t take a lead, to start things, if we were starting something new. But then the best way to do it is to hand it off and have it driven from the citizens themselves or from a group. So now the municipality is a partner in it, not the driver.
I’m coming from a different point of view, because the town of Sackville has had a recreation director has a recreation department and worked on it. I’m coming out of Dorchester, where, for the last 15 years, I’ve been the recreation program. As a councillor, anything coming from the municipality is being being driven through me. It’d be nice to be able to hand it off. Do I expect the recreation department here as well to be able to run the Sandpiper festival or run the different festivals? No. Do I expect him to be a partner in it? Yes. Whether it’s here, whether it’s Point de Bute, festivals in a sense should be run by the people. Those are the people who need to have a say in what it is is going on. Yes, you might need the additional support from municipality to be make things happen, so get the barriers out, make sure the grass is mowed, or that gate is open or these tables are available.
But it needs to come from the peoples where things are. And that’s how you can keep your identity in your local areas. Because the names are not going to disappear. But the identity of oh, that’s the village, this is the town, those will disappear, but you want to be able to keep your identity. Dorchester is the Shirtetown, so we need the Shiretown festival. Do I expect the town Tantramar to take that on and run with it? No. Do I expect them to be a partner? Definitely. But there needs to be the grassroots there to be able to organize it.
Same with the festivals that have been happening in Sackville. Do I expect the town of Tantramar to be in charge of them? No. Work with the partners they’ve already go to make those happen. Then we will look at other areas of what we should be doing? Sort of activities and stuff like that, that isn’t there presently. I’m just looking at the Jolicures, or etc, is there something we need to celebrate over there or have something over there? Because everything can’t be centered inside… We’ve got to make sure our programming, recreationally-wise, goes out to where people are. We can’t expect everybody to come into one centre.
CHMA: I’ve taken up a lot of your time. I should probably let you go. But I’m going to ask if there’s anything else you would like people in Ward 1 to know.
RC: I’m here to serve. I’m always open. So if you want to stop me in the road and ask me question, ask me a question. I will do my best to answer that question if I can. I will try and find you an answer if I don’t have it, or I’ll direct you to the right people who can.
That’s the way I’ve always been. I will sit down and have a conversation with you. We will take the time thats needed to discuss something. Am I going to be able to answer all your questions? Am I gonna be able to solve all your problems? I’m not gonna make that promise because I know I can’t. But I will promise you I’ll do my best to see if we can resolve what’s going on.
CHMA: All right, sounds good. Well, very many thanks for stopping by Robert.
RC: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you.
