Municipal election season is upon us. Barring any pandemic tragedies, on May 10 Sackville residents will be heading to the polls to cast votes for the next group of people to represent them at town council. In an effort to help inform you about who your candidates are, CHMA news is speaking with all 12 council and two mayoralty candidates in the coming weeks.
This time we speak with council candidate, and current incumbent, Bruce Phinney:
Check out the rest of our local elections coverage here.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: Bruce Phinney, thanks for joining us today.
BRUCE PHINNEY: My pleasure, Erica. My pleasure to be here.
CHMA: Let’s start off… for people who don’t already know you, can you tell us a bit about yourself.
BP: I was born in Sackville, but grew up in Oromocto. I moved here in ’77, worked for the university for 42 and a half years, just recently retired last September. I’m enjoying retirement immensely and became a politician in 2004. This is my 17th year, looking forward to hopefully being there for another four. I enjoy doing the work, and hopefully representing the people the way I feel people should be represented. So that’s pretty much it, I guess.
CHMA: Alright, so 17 years on Council, that’s a long time. What factored into your decision to run again?
BP: There are some economic issues. As a matter of fact during the COVID time, I think we need people in there to turn around and see exactly what we can do to resolve some of the issues that we have.
It’s just that I enjoy doing it. And I’m a person that, I’ve always said from the very beginning, I don’t represent one or two of my friends or groups of friends, I represent the whole population of Sackville. I don’t I pretend to say I don’t have any friends, but I do have a few. But I’m here to represent the people and the wishes of them. We can’t always give them everything they want. But the thing is, we all turn around, as politicians, try to do the best we can. Or at least I know I do anyway.
CHMA: You mentioned the economy there… do you have some issues that you’re hoping to highlight in the course of your campaign?
BP: I guess the biggest thing, when I talk about economic times, I’m looking at the fact that the both the federal government and the provincial government are so far in debt, it’s unbelievable. So I think we have to be very careful with the money we have, and try to do the best we can, with the number of projects that we can hopefully afford. I don’t mean that we need to stop doing everything. But there are some things I think we need to stop and look and determine exactly what’s in the best interest for the people.
And so I’m hoping to turn around and hopefully be able to bring that to light with whoever I get to work with. And of course with the management. So time will tell, I guess. On the 10th of May, we’ll see what happens, who gets elected and who doesn’t. So we’ll go from there.
CHMA: So that’s interesting. In terms of economic issues, you’re thinking in terms of the town’s finances, that you feel that might need to be a bit conservative heading forward because of the crisis?
BP: That’s exactly right, Erica. There’s an old saying, you can’t spend what you don’t have. Even if we do try to apply for some grants, I mean, both the federal and provincial government are limited as a matter of fact, right now. So we need to be careful to make sure that we don’t spend more than what we can afford.
We have to be a little more conservative. I mean, economists today are even saying to individuals, to people themselves, be careful. Because if you spend more than what you can afford, you may end up finding yourself in financial trouble. And that concerns me.
Personally, I find that I’ve been able to save more during these times, because I look at the things and say, do I really need it? No. So I turn around and wait until I can afford it, or I go without. And I think sometimes we may have to do that.
Would we like to be able to turn around and give everybody what they want? Definitely. But it’s reality. I mean, it’s just not possible. So we have to be very careful and limit what we can and cannot do. Not to be mean, but also try and find ways of spending money to help the people through these COVID times. I mean, everybody’s under stress and pressure and everything. But it’s something that we don’t have control over, so we have to take it day by day, find avenues in order to alleviate our stress and pressure. And I think that’s what we need to do for the people as well. And just bring to the attention of people that, you know, we are limited the same as everybody else. So let’s sit back and just evaluate things and then move forward from there.
CHMA: I know you mentioned 17 years on council so this is maybe a tall question for you. What are you most proud of in your time on council and what if anything, is something you look back on and you’d like to change?
BP: One of the biggest things I guess, Erica… I’m very proud of the new Town Hall. I was a part of that from the very beginning. It was long overdue, because the old Town Hall was certainly in need of being replaced. It had been around for a long time. It served its purpose.With the new technology today, we now have a geothermal means of power in order to run it. The old Town Hall had a lot of asbestos, and old windows. There were no windows actually, for a lot of the workers.
So and that’s one of the things I’m very, very proud of. And, and I like the idea that we turned around and determined to put the fire hall, the town hall and the RCMP [together].
And the biggest thing I’m really happy about in connection with that project, is the fact that the RCMP are paying over 50% of the mortgage. We had a lot of help from ex-RCMP who are retired, and also the engineer who worked on it, Andrew Amos. And it was just a great project. And I’m very proud of it.
There’s many other things. I mean, we turned around and did the tourist bureau.
Some of the things that I wish I could change was… Some of the hiring practices we did, as a matter of fact, hired some people that just weren’t the right fit. And I think maybe we need to look at exactly our hiring process that we have in place now. And possibly, we may be able to modify it or create a completely new system, as a matter of fact. Because we’ve hired some people that I’m not sure if they are the right fit for here. Because I am hearing from people that they’re a little disappointed in some of the people that we have hired, and it’s because they know some of the people that were hired.
Sometimes council doesn’t really know anything about the people that are being brought forward because we don’t get to see the resumes. And sometimes we don’t get a heads up as to why staff or management wants to hire this individual. And I’d like to have a little more involvement from management with the town council, so we can determine and a better way in order to determine if what we’re doing, if they’re bringing forward the right person, and they’re going to be the right fit for the town.
CHMA: So as I mean, as it stands now, the CAO would be responsible for hiring all of town staff, and council is responsible for hiring the CAO. Is that right? And are you saying that you would like council to have more input in hiring other other members of the staff?
BP: I guess what I’m saying is we get them brought to us. And we get them sometimes brought to us at the last minute. We haven’t had a chance to really talk about them. We never discuss, that I can remember over my 17 years, involvement or explanation from management as to why they’re bringing forward this person.
The reason I say that is because a number of times that the names have been brought forward in order to hire this person, I’ve questioned because of the number of people that are applying for the position itself. You know, are they the right fit? Are you sure they’re the right person? Is there no one else in that list who would be better qualified in order to do the job and maybe a better fit? I’ve always got the answer that, ‘yeah, we think this is the right person.’ I find out later, maybe it’s not, through my connections.
And I’d like to just have council and management work together a little bit better in order to turn around and rectify some of the problems that we have. It’s obvious we’ve made mistakes over the 17 years, look at the number of CAOs that we’ve hired, and the problems we’ve had.
I’m concerned about the hiring process, and I think it needs to be addressed. And we need to have a council that’s willing to turn around and work together on these issues.
And I’m going to be quite honest, Erica. The last five years have not been very cohesive. From what I heard, one of the councillors who’s been there for the five years, his disappointment was that we couldn’t be a little more cohesive. Well, maybe the fact is, is that there’s some of us that actually hold personal grudges, I’ve found. And I think actually there’s been groups of councillors and maybe management that have gotten together and, and sort of excluded others, some of the other councillors from some of the conversation. So I’d like to see us address this issue and see if we can bring it together so that it’s in the best interest… Because we have to remember, we work for the people. We’re not working for this group or that group. And as I said, I have friends, but I don’t do that. I noticed lately we’ve hired friends of management sometimes, or we’ve hired family members of some of the people within those walls in the town hall. And I question as to whether or not that’s in the best interest of the people. And I’m hoping that maybe we can address it with the next Council and maybe come up with a better solution than what’s already in existence at the present time.
CHMA: Alright, Bruce, is there anything else that voters should know about you heading into this campaign?
BP: I don’t know… I guess those that don’t know me, ask around. For some reason, everybody seems to know me.
My nickname, I might as well tell everybody, has been ‘trouble’. It’s been all my life. I believe in standing up for what’s good, in the best interest of the people. I was brought up to believe that nobody’s any better than anybody else. And we’re all equal. And we all deserve. It doesn’t matter how much education or how much money you have, you’re no more entitled than anybody else. And that’s something that I’ll always believe in.
I mean, I’ve always been told stand up for what you believe in, if you find out that you’re wrong, be man enough to turn around and stand up and admit it. And I don’t have a problem doing that.
As I say, I tell it like it is, and I always will, but I’ve always got an open mind. And I’m more than happy to sit down and talk, or a phone call or an email. I prefer phone calls. I like talking to people like we are today, Erica, talking here in person. But I also like talking on the phone. I find that we’ve got a system today that’s in place where we’re very becoming very impersonal. And I mean, people, humans, they like interaction amongst themselves.
So I’m open minded. Give me a call. If there’s something you want to talk about, please don’t, don’t be afraid. I don’t bite, believe me. I’d be more than happy to sit down and talk to you and see if we can’t find a solution to whatever your questions are. Maybe there’s a problem that you think that needs to be resolved. Let’s sit down and we’ll talk about it. We can go from there.
CHMA: Well, thanks very much, Bruce, I appreciate your time today.
BP: It’s been a pleasure for me to turn around and speak with you too, Erica. Thank you for the good work that you do. I enjoy seeing you on the Teams meetings and seeing how concerned you are about about some of the issues.
One thing if I may before ending, I would turn around one of the things I’d like to see us change is more openness and transparency. And I think that actually we’re having too many in camera meetings. And information that has been requested by the media has not been provided. And I think we need to address that issue. That’s something that very concerns me, because to me, the people are the people who who elect us, and we represent them. And people in the community need to know what’s going on. And the only avenue for them to do that is usually through the media such as yourself and Bruce Wark. And so that’s another issue I’m hoping to be able to tackle if re-elected.
CHMA: Alright, many thanks, Bruce.
BP: Thank you, Erica. Have a great day and stay safe.
