Sabine Dietz was first elected to Sackville town council in May 2021, about six months before the province announced it would dissolving Sackville and creating a new, much larger town of Tantramar.
Dietz is known for asking questions during council meetings, and for her vocal opposition to the process of forced amalgamation. In her last campaign, Dietz ran as a climate change candidate, but this time she says her experience on council has taught her that she can’t be a single issue representative, and she says a big part of her job if elected will be listening to residents across Ward 4 communities, to make sure she understands their concerns.
CHMA sat down to talk with Dietz outside in the still balmy weather on November 4, 2022:
CHMA has offered to interview all candidates in all wards for the upcoming Tantramar Election. Dietz’s sole opponent in Ward 4, Matt Estabrooks, declined our request. Estabrooks explained that he has “decided to take an independent approach to getting [his] platform out this election, via social media as well as good old face to face conversation.”
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: Interview with Sabine Dietz, November 4, 2022
CHMA: For those listening who might not already know you, tell us a bit about yourself.
Sabine Dietz: So my name is Sabine Dietz. I am a resident of Sackville and have been for the last 17 years.
I moved here 17 years ago. [I have] two daughters, both of them are now grown. I live on High Marsh Road so a bit on the outskirts of Sackville. I’ve been a councillor for the last year and a half during the entire process of reform. I’ve been very active on the Rural Health Action Group. I’m sitting on a housing committee, an affordable housing committee. And if you ever want to hear how much I participate in council, you can easily listen to the YouTube channel of the town of Sackville, and the council meetings there.
CHMA: All right. You’re known for asking questions.
Sabine Dietz: Yes, I’m known for asking questions and poking. And I spent a lot of time just figuring out what we’re doing and how we’re doing things. So yeah, I ask a lot of questions.
CHMA: What factored into your decision to run, again, for this new town of Tantramar council?
Sabine Dietz: Yeah, so it was a bit of a difficult decision for me. Because the last year, when I started my term, it was a good council and I felt very comfortable in it, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And I wanted to help the community make inroads. And one of the issues was, of course, health care. So you know, Council became part of the Rural Health Action Group, as a result. I think that was the first council meeting that we had.
And so over the last year, in the winter was especially difficult, in the process of the province essentially forcing us into a process that was not a good process. And so I was pretty frustrated with that. And so just more recently, I made the decision. Okay, there’s so much to do in the next year. And we need people that know and have explored what is actually at stake, what the things are that will happen. And we still don’t know exactly what will happen. We don’t know how to clean up the mess that the province has created. So I figured okay, if the right [candidate for] mayor is running, then I will put in my hat for the Ward 4 candidate pool.
CHMA: All right. Now when you say ‘the right mayor’ is running now, is that something you can share? Are you supporting a particular mayoral candidate?
Sabine Dietz: His lawn sign is on my lawn. So if you go out there, Andrew Black’s lawn sign is on my lawn. I’m happy to support him as mayor.
CHMA: Okay, that’s Deputy Mayor Andrew Black. I want to focus on what issues you are hoping to highlight in your campaign when you’re campaigning? I am assuming you’re going door to door a bit. Are you hearing issues from people? Or are you bringing up issues at the door?
Sabine Dietz: So I’m primarily introducing myself. Ward 4 goes all the way to Midgic, Cookville, Brooklyn Road, Goose Lake, Anderson Settlement, Aboujagane Road. So it’s expanded quite a bit into the rural area. And many folks there just are sort of a bit flabbergasted about what’s happened and that they’re now voting; there’s a lot that pay attention, so more an introductory…
With folks in town, like the original area that was part of Sackville, Mount View Road, Pond Shore, I’m talking more about, ‘these are things that I’ve worked on, and I’m committed to working on in the future as well.’
I think in my last campaign, I really focused. I said, look, I’ll bring up climate change, climate change impacts, climate change adaptation, etc. I’ll elevate that. And I’ll try to make sure that we, as a town, as a community, pay attention and put a lens on everything. It turned out that, you know, you can’t be a town councillor and be a single issue person. And I fully realized that and recognize that.
So, you know, we’re all concerned with health care, we’re all concerned with affordable housing. So as these issues pop up or come up—and they usually come up through through local people and local organizations—as they come up, you know, I will be there and support the work that they’re doing. This is exactly what I’ve done with the Rural Health Action Group. I am part of the affordable housing group that’s sort of active. So just trying to bring in what we can from the town side, from the government side. But also just as a person, I’m personally interested in our Sackville hospital, the service being fully restored and you know, more services being provided to our area. So these are the things…
In town itself, I think there’s an interest in different issues. I think there’s a lot of concern about what will happen after after January, because people don’t realize that it’s happening in January, all the changes basically implemented. So there’s a lot of concern. And I think the people that I’ve talked to, they expressed the same thing that I think: We don’t know. We don’t know, what will it do to me? So concern about taxes, especially in more rural areas of the Ward, definitely the tax issue comes up, the increase in tax assessments, which has really nothing to do with the town government, but it trickles down. So property assessments are done by the province. And yet we set the tax rate. Not for next year, but years after, the town council sets the tax rate.
So there’s all sorts of different things, I think. Mostly I want to make sure people know they have a chance to vote, that they have a stake in who sits on town council and who pays attention and makes sure that we as a community can come together, that these different pieces come together and people don’t feel left out in a Tantramar community.
CHMA: Let’s continue to talk a bit more about Ward 4. There are so many rural areas in that Ward. For people who don’t know, it starts, it sort of splits down the middle of Silver Lake. So right after Lillas Fawcett Park, heading out Pond Shore Road, up that way towards Midgic and all that area.
As you mentioned, this council that gets elected in the first year will not be setting a tax rate. But thereafter, that will be your responsibility. How are you going to balance this kind of, what we understand to be maybe a lower-than-it-needs-to-be tax rate in rural areas right now? Versus where the tax rate might need to be, and the balance of who has what services? How are you going to navigate this very difficult path? What are your thoughts on that, at least from this end of things right now?
Sabine Dietz: Yeah. So this is… It’s going to be really difficult. I fully admit that. I mean, you know, in some ways, Sackville has already a differential rate. Because if you’re not on water and sewer, you know, you don’t have that expense. So it’s a service, for example, that’s already split. Like I’m on a well. I don’t get invoices for water and sewer, and there’s an area on Mount View Road that’s already in that situation. Outside, of course, everybody’s on well, and their own septic. So there’s certain services that I’m not so worried about, because that’s already split up. So whoever doesn’t have water and sewer won’t have to worry about that.
And of course, we have different tax rates for businesses, we’ve got a Business Improvement Area. So there’s different tax rates. But then it becomes difficult because the different areas in the new Tantramar community, like Dorchester has a different tax rate from Sackville, and you’ve got the local service districts that will be incorporated into Tantramar, they have a different tax rate. They’ve got also got a complicated tax rate because they are separately paying for roads… which is one thing I understand that where currently the Sackville town is not servicing roads, the province still will maintain the road service. So those folks out there will pay into the province for road services. I don’t know how that will work, okay, because usually you get one tax rate and that’s it.
For other things, honestly, I mean, the taxes here in Sackville pay for services, such as recreation, pay for our Civic Centre, pay for a whole slew of services that are currently limited to Sackville itself. So yes, people on the outskirts will look at budget deliberations and say, Okay, so in your budget, you’ve got $300,000 for XYZ. What am I getting out of that when I’m living all the way at the end of Brooklyn road?
So I think these are these are difficult conversations that will be coming. I don’t have the answer to that. I think the important thing is that we have conversations, and not just council itself. You know, I live on High Marsh Road. I’m living in the old town boundary. I’m out now knocking on doors on Brooklyn Road, all the way out there, and trying to figure out okay, what are the concerns?
This is where affordability is an issue, right? People who deliberately move to the rural areas because taxes are lower, they’re already getting hit with higher property assessments all the way out on Brooklyn Road, because our house prices went up so dramatically last year. So already their assessments are going up. And then we’re meddling as a community with the tax rates on top of that. It’ll be complicated. Honestly, it’ll be really complicated. And I can just see where so much time will have to be spent just on understanding what it currently is. And then on looking at, well, where is the fairness?
And that’s where I think I want to go. It needs to be fair for everybody. It needs to be fair, so we can say okay, a) can we keep differential tax rates? Is that going forward an option? Next year it is. But we haven’t figured out what the government actually wants us to do, so what’s happening after next year? Is all of Tantramar going to have the same tax rate? I don’t know. So we need to know from the government, what is your plan here? And then we need to figure out, well, within that framework that government gives us, if we can’t change that frame—that’s where the advocacy that the council needs to have towards government—if we can’t change that frame, how do we work within this to make it fair for everybody? And that alone, that’s going to be a big piece of work. And that’s, I think, where our public, our community, the citizens of the community Tantramar, will be probably most interested in. And it needs to be very public, and it needs to engage people, so Council actually really understands the complexity of this. And you can only understand the complexity of this if you really also listen to the folks from Westcock, from Jolicure, from Aulac, from surrounding areas from Dorchester… You really need to listen to this.
When I think about Ward 4, the only way I understand it, or can understand it, is if I have conversations out there. I’m serious about listening to this, right? I can’t just say, okay, now I’m representing Ward 4, which includes some rural areas. I know what they need. Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t, I need to listen and hear, well, where are your concerns? And how can I incorporate it?
And this is not just for Ward 4, because, you know, I’m not just thinking about representing Ward 4. I’m being elected by Ward 4, if I get elected, but I would be part of Tantramar. So then, as a councillor, I’m required to consider all of those concerns in the entire area. That’ll be hard to get councillors to that point, all of council, and it’ll be hard making decisions that will not please everybody in the end. I’m 100% sure of that. There are things that will fall. There are things that will not be good. And I think, in any case, in a process like this, in bringing communities together, there will be things like that, that there are hard decisions that will have to be made. I don’t know what they are, but I’m prepared that there will be hard decisions to be made.
CHMA: I’ve been asking folks, you know, going into this new town of Tantramar, can you give me one thing that you’re looking forward to that you actually think is a good opportunity? So this is sort of the best and worst of the new town of Tantramar. And one thing that you’re sort of looking at as that is going to be the big challenge.
Sabine Dietz: So you mean the best or the worst?
CHMA: One of each.
Sabine Dietz: So the best, which really excites me, and this is this comes from my professional background. You know, when you have a community like Sackville, which sits in a watershed, meaning you know, everything around it influences the town. When you cut trees on around Silver Lake, it influences the water running off into Silver Lake, it influences flooding in Silver Lake and beyond. So the woods beyond Silver Lake were within Sackville, but there’s other areas beyond Mount View, which weren’t part of the town of Sackville, right? Just on the eastern side of Mount View, northeastern.
So there are these outlying areas that are being incorporated now into Tantramar that are also, coincidentally, a good part of the watershed area. So how water essentially flows over the landscape. So I’m excited to look at the entire region as one, instead of small pieces, which cannot really, certain things in the town of Sackville were limited as to what we can do. We cannot plan on the outside, right? We can’t say okay, we need to look for Frosty Hollow and beyond, because it influences us. We are limited by the town boundaries. And so those boundaries will have been expanded. And so we get a chance as a large community to think in a way that makes sense for especially climate change, and land use planning. And that’s what I’m excited about. We have an opportunity to be a bit more logical in terms of how we decide what happens on the land, so that our risks in terms of climate change, especially flood issues, can be reduced. And that was what makes me really excited. It makes more logical sense to me to think about a territory that includes almost, not quite, an entire watershed area. So that makes me really excited.
And the municipal planning process, I think, we can do a lot of good going through a process that is heavy on engagement, heavy on communication, and a bit more than what the law requires. And so that would be really wrapped up into this idea of okay, now we can look at the entire area as a unit instead of this town of Sackville as a small entity, which is influenced by a lot of things that go on around it. And you know, that is not just climate change, but it’s got to do with people. People travel into Sackville. They’re linked to Sackville, already.
But again, we are theoretically, currently, as current town council and government, we’re supposed to only think about within the boundaries. And so it’ll expand I think, how we think about the region, how we think about inclusivity, how we think about just, ‘oh right, so maybe there are areas in this community, the larger one, that we need to pay more attention to.’ Because maybe this Rural Rides thing, you know, for Sackville itself, it’s not such a big issue. But when you go out to the outskirts, it likely is way more of an issue. Although Sackville supports Rural Rides. But still, you know, it’s a more inclusive, a more broad-thinking or more logical… It makes perfect sense to me.
On the negative side, which did almost scare me off, although I’m certainly not one who’s scared of a lot of work… It’s going to be a lot of work. And that was one of the decisions I had to make, do I actually have the capacity and the nerves to put in the work that I know will be required in this? It’s not going to be an off the side of the desk kind of thing.
Those of us who really care about what we do on council, I think all of us are really aware of how much work this will actually be. And so it’s also a bit scary.
I do have a full time job. I know if I get elected, I’ll have to consider stepping back from that a bit to make room for that lots of work, at least for the next year. I don’t know how long the work will last, but just to have the capacity and the time to dig into the things that we really need to dig into.
And we as council, currently, we need to understand… but the next council needs to fully understand what they’re doing, because the decisions that are being made will have an impact on so many people and on future years. So I think that’s what’s a bit of the… It’s not bad. It’s just, like I said, it did sort of pull me towards not offering again, because I’m so aware of what kind of work this will involve.
CHMA: All right. One last question for you. Is there anything else you want voters in Ward 4 to know?
Sabine Dietz: That they can call me anytime. I’ve got all my information out there. I have pamphlets that I’m handing out, and putting in every mailbox. I’d just like to make sure that everybody understands, they can call me with any concerns or questions. I’m there. That’s why I’m getting the information out. And I will respond.
The only thing that I’m not responding to is [comments] on Facebook, you can message me via Messenger, but not Facebook [comments]. I don’t engage on social media, and I’ve made the decision I will not. So I’m keeping out of that one, just posting off and on updates of what I hear.
CHMA: You mean comments on Facebook groups and things like that? You can’t keep track of that?
Sabine Dietz: No, and I think that’s one of the biggest challenges being a councillor. In one way we should monitor social media of what sort of pops to the surface. But on the other hand, I think it’s also… There’s too many negative things going on. And I’m one who said okay, I don’t want to monitor this because it’s actually… There’s a lot of hurtful stuff going on. And when you’re already exposed, you know you are a public figure. So you’re exposed to things, being criticized, being blamed. And then on top of that having social media come in, this is very uncomfortable.
Already last year when the election came, I said I wasn’t going to engage on Facebook via comments. I’m perfectly fine with other things, but…
CHMA: Okay, so one-to-one communication, that’s the best way for you.
Sabine Dietz: Absolutely. Yes, anytime.
CHMA: Thanks very much, Sabine.
Sabine Dietz: Thank you.
