{"id":1651,"date":"2016-09-13T17:56:58","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T20:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/?p=1651"},"modified":"2016-09-13T17:56:58","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T20:56:58","slug":"rothesay-council-adds-last-minute-agenda-items-without-notice-continues-the-war-on-taxpayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/?p=1651","title":{"rendered":"Rothesay Council adds last minute agenda items without notice & continues the War on Taxpayers"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 13th 2016<\/em><\/p>\n

If last night’s Rothesay Council meeting is any indication, there has been some\u00a0progress in fighting the old habits of secrecy inherited from the previous\u00a0council. Meanwhile, Council still hasn’t signaled their desire for a change away from the hostile and confrontational way that\u00a0taxpayers who have issues with the town are treated.<\/p>\n

On the first point, it appears that some councillors may be\u00a0trying to reform\u00a0Council’s\u00a0closed meeting process. That may explain why\u00a0several items ended up, at the last minute, on the agenda of last night’s Public meeting of Council.<\/p>\n

One of the additions to last night’s agenda was a motion\u00a0for a 100% increase in the Town’s line of credit\u00a0from $2.5 million to a hefty $5 million dollars. It was added without any notice to the public and without the\u00a0background documents to give transparency to the request. While it’s understandable that some councillors would like to have discussions about money behind closed doors and away from the potential for awkward questions, money issues belong in open session.<\/p>\n

The Municipalities Act is clear that unless an agenda item falls within a described category of exclusions, all business of Council must be conducted in public. It does little for accountability to keep the public in the dark when\u00a0Rothesay authorizes the\u00a0taking on of more debt, even short term debt.<\/p>\n

So if items were\u00a0bumped from the closed meeting to the open, then that is concrete progress in moving the transparency agenda forward. On the down side it also signals that there is still work to be done on changing those old habits. Of course we’ll never know the real story as the closed meeting agenda is always kept secret in Rothesay!<\/p>\n

So,\u00a0quodos to those responsible for bringing these matters into the daylight, wherever they came from!<\/p>\n

\n

The City of Saint John undertook its major priority setting\u00a0exercise last night. It was open to the public. A question for\u00a0the Rothesay Council, “If Rothesay has a priority setting meeting, will it be open to the public or will it be done in\u00a0secret with\u00a0the public finding\u00a0out about it after the fact when it’s all about defending a foregone conclusion?”<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The war on taxpayers, in the meantime, went on apace last night when Council voted to delay concrete action related to a flooding issue that is believed to have been caused by work done by the town. Instead, last night they voted to undertake another “survey” of the affected homeowner’s property prolonging what has been a 6 year struggle between the property owners and the town council.<\/span><\/p>\n

The property owner, Michael Butler had been seeking access to an adjuster’s report that spoke to the cause of\u00a0flooding on his\u00a0property. The report was commissioned\u00a0by the Town in 2009 (with the cooperation of the Butlers). But Butler had no alternative but to\u00a0take the Town of Rothesay to court this spring in an attempt to get the report as Rothesay Council ignored a finding of the Provincial\u00a0Privacy Commissioner that the town had no legal authority to withhold it. A subsequent judgement awarded him costs. The Judge has been critical of information submitted on behalf of the Town describing it as\u00a0misleading. The court proceeding ended when the Town released the report.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Butler’s problems began in 2009 when the Town filled in a drainage ditch, and installed a drain pipe.\u00a0The ditch had been originally constructed by the province prior to amalgamation to drain their property.\u00a0The adjuster’s report suggested that the flooding\u00a0was likely caused by the town’s work. The water back up continues to this day and Rothesay has done nothing to remediate the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Butler obtained the report this spring and made\u00a0Councillors aware of the report contents, including its conclusion involving the Town’s work. <\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of just fixing the problem Council sent Mr. Butler on a wild goose chase, first to the Public Works Committee. Then more than a month later, the Public Works Committee (after yet another presentation by Mr. Butler) punted it back to Council with a recommendation for yet another study. Council approved that recommendation\u00a0in a motion last night. But by no means was it clear from the public gallery what purpose another study would accomplish other than delaying the inevitable. That is the town finally doing its\u00a0duty and cleaning up the mess they have apparently made of\u00a0the Butlers’ property. On the contrary comments by one Councillor appeared to suggest that this is more likely an effort to make a further case to remove responsibility from the town instead of finding a solution for the homeowner.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked during last night\u2019s meeting why this was dragging on for so long, the Town Manager simply observed that Mr. Butler hadn’t sued the Town. This seemed to me to imply that the Town sees legal action as the required route for Homeowners who have a beef with Rothesay. Given this attitude it is not surprising that the town’s legal bills have skyrocketed in recent years and homeowners see the Rothesay\u00a0as hostile and defensive.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the war on taxpayers will continue until Rothesay Councillors are motivated to say enough is enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the Town makes a mistake it shouldn’t have to be\u00a0forced into doing\u00a0the right thing by losing in the Courts. It should do the right thing in the first place. The Butler’s case is not untypical and that is something the Mayor needs to work on well ahead of any PR excercise about transparency. <\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a pity this Council has decided to sit on their hands as they, too, will wear this when taxpayers ask why the town spends more on legal bills than it does on fixing their mistakes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 13th 2016 If last night’s Rothesay Council meeting is any indication, there has been some\u00a0progress in fighting the old habits of secrecy inherited from the previous\u00a0council. Meanwhile, Council still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onerothesay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_1249.jpg?fit=3045%2C1316&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hcCG-qD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1669,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions\/1669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onerothesay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}