As Tantramar clerk Donna Beal had the chance to explain several times during the municipality’s recent outreach meeting series, the job of town clerk involves being the custodian of all official documents for the municipality. In Tantramar, that job is a little more complicated, because it involves bylaws and policies for three entities: a former town, a former village, and a new municipality. Or at least it does in theory. While the documents for the town of Sackville and municipality of Tantramar are under Beal’s direct care, those of the former village of Dorchester are out of her hands, and have been since shortly after amalgamation in January 2023.
In mid-June, CHMA requested a copy of the Dorchester bylaw “relating to Loitering and Begging”, since it was proposed for repeal and replacement with a new Tantramar-wide bylaw. Two days later, clerk Donna Beal responded via email to say that, “all former Village of Dorchester files are currently in decontamination and staff have no access to these files at this time.”
Tantramar CAO Jennifer Borne later wrote, “the former Dorchester Municipal Office closed on or around January 30, 2023 under workplace health and safety we lost access to everything within the office.”
The ongoing issues put the municipality in contravention of Section 75 of the Local Governance Act, which says that bylaws must be available for public review in the office of the clerk during normal hours.
Since around the time the former Village office closed down, the Tantramar clerk’s office has been working on reviewing and replacing policies and bylaws of the former village and town. Reports on proposed new bylaws often refer to the Dorchester bylaws by name, though the documents are not available for review.
Borne says the inability to review Dorchester bylaws is not a problem, since the village bylaws are quite old. “As an example, the Water and Sewerage is 1976,” writes Borne, “and when this is reviewed and a new one is developed we would look at new by-laws, look at new ones in adjacent cities etc. instead of tweaking the old one.”
As for the enforceability of Dorchester’s current bylaws, which remain technically in force within the former village boundaries until Tantramar repeals them, Borne says that is also not an issue, because staff do have access to the key ones.
The province enacted four mandatory bylaws at the outset of amalgamation, and copies of another four that were amended in 2021 are available on the Dorchester website. Those include bylaw enforcement, dangerous or unsightly premises, police services and a dog bylaw. The municipal plan and zoning bylaws for the village are also available online, through Plan 360.
“Typical by-laws that long-term or new residents of Dorchester would need to be familiar with are our four mandatory, municipal plan, water & sewerage… all of which we have access to,” writes Borne.
Borne says the timeline for the decontamination or digitization of Dorchester’s files is still unknown. “This is a circumstance that is out of our control,” writes Borne. “With respect to Occupational Health and Safety, we cannot ask staff to be in an unsafe situation until we have professional guidance on the next steps. We have been working on a plan to sort this out.”
Tantramar council will re-consider replacing the loitering bylaws for Sackville and Dorchester on July 9, at their next regular meeting.
