RELOCATION! RELOCATION! RELOCATION!

Posted On December 4, 2013

(title credit to Mayor Ritchie)

By Al McPhail

The mayor published “a rant in three parts” under this title on Facebook late last week. Upon first (and second and third reading) I was incredibly upset, mostly because as is often the case, he presented his opinion as if it was fact and clearly this is not the case and at the same time he called into question the motives and integrity of citizen volunteers on that Committee, including my own. As I sit down to write this, I have just returned home from the Georgetown Conference presentation held at the Civic Centre on November 28. At the end of the presentation, Mayor Ritchie, Joe Gee and I were chatting and Joe was relating a story about a 90 year old man who lived under a bridge, etc, etc and of course the punch-line to the story is “that’s a great story except you got the age wrong, you got this wrong, you got that wrong, etc, etc”. Of course I couldn’t resist saying, “gee Terry, that could be one of your articles”. We had a good laugh. Terry, as we all know, is a gifted writer but I think sometimes his “facts” get a little distorted. It is important as this program wraps up that folks know and understand clearly how the Citizens Advisory Committee came to be, its role in the program and other pertinent information. Just the facts. So if you will bear with me I will do my best to shed some light on this.
 

The Citizens Advisory Committee was established by the Department of Local Government and Environment shortly after the relocation program was announced by Minister Fitch on October 2, 2012. The first meeting was held on October 15, 2012. The original members of the Committee consisted of departmental representatives from Fredericton, myself in my capacity as Chair of the Flood Victims Committee, Dan Dionne and Justine Waldeck from the village office and Wes McLean. No elected municipal representatives were invited by the government to sit on the Committee. You can draw your own conclusions as to why; I am just reporting the facts.
 

At the February 26, 2013 meeting I suggested that Jonathan Gagnon and Stacey Kelly be invited to join the Committee. Jonny had been an original member of the Flood Victims Committee and as the relocation program dragged on I asked for volunteers from that Committee to go door to door on the Andover side to assist and encourage homeowners there to get their applications together so that we could get to work. At the same time they were also acting as coordinators for the move of multiple homes to the Till Road. It seemed to me that it would be logical and more efficient to have them on the Citizens Advisory Committee rather than for them to report their canvassing activity to me and for me to then pass it on to the Committee. The Committee agreed. Sometime in the spring, Terry and I had a discussion about the activities of the Committee. I suggested to him that since the Committee was dealing with issues relating to the municipality, as mayor he should have the right to attend those meetings if he wished. He attended the next meeting and most of those subsequent thereto. No one questioned or challenged his participation.
 

He was actually aware of the Committee’s existence long before this as I had written a letter to Minister Fitch on February 20th outlining concerns with the slow pace of program execution and other issues. I copied Wes in on this letter. It turned out that Wes had met with Council on these same issues the day before!
 

In late summer Les Smith started attending Committee meetings. Les had been hired by Hatchard Consulting Engineers which had been contracted by the government to do engineering work relating to relocations and floodproofing. Hiring them was one of the best moves the government made as their expertise was invaluable. And that’s a fact!
 

The Committee met weekly on Monday afternoons usually at the village office. The door was never closed except for the odd occasion when the discussion got a little heated and voices (usually mine) got a little loud as we debated the latest government screw up in program delivery.
 

The purpose of the Committee was pretty much exactly as the mayor stated in his first rant….to advise the departmental authorities on program execution. Make no mistake, this program was devised and controlled from Fredericton. We provided input and department officials either acted upon it or didn’t. The Committee had no policy making authority. We were an advisory board only. That’s a shame because had we the authority that the Flood Committee had back in the 1993 relocation we would have gotten a whole lot more accomplished sooner, for less. But the fact is we didn’t have that authority so we just tried to influence things as best we could. We did our very best to try to ensure that everyone got treated fairly and equitably. There were certainly some files that were mishandled and while the government was challenged on these, at the end of the day it was their call.
 

The mayor reported on the unexpectedly high number of buyout requests under the program and the impact this would have on village revenue. He is absolutely correct to be concerned about this. Every buyout means one less rate payer. But there were more buyouts than he reported because several properties were bought out under the Disaster Financial Assistance program as well because of the extent of flood damage they incurred, environmental issues, etc. I am not certain as to the precise number bought out under DFA but it would be at least a dozen I expect. Examples would include Annabelle Willet, Jeff Hitchcock, the 2 Graeme Shaw properties on Perth Main Street, Cindy McLaughlin’s apartment building and others. So we lost more rate payers here. The village is now looking at a huge expense to provide water and sewer services to new subdivisions but will have fewer rate payers to pick up the cost, so the mayor is right to be concerned about this. However, mayor and Council were not concerned enough to adopt a policy stipulating that homeowners be required to relocate to serviced lots where such lots were available. In my letter to Mayor Ritchie dated February 5, 2013 I requested that Council adopt a clear policy in this regard so as to mitigate the revenue loss to the municipality but they declined to do so. Don’t be surprised when your water and sewer rates shoot through the roof. It is important to note that when the proposal was being put together for Cabinet consideration in the spring and summer of 2012 the intention was to use the 1993 relocation program as a template for this program. Back then, a buyout would only be considered if the home was not structurally safe to move. A straight buyout just because you wanted to sell your house was not on the menu. The intention was to protect the village tax base as much as possible and this makes sense. When this program was announced the Minister said homeowners had a choice of three options with no conditions. Apparently a lot of people wanted to sell their homes.
 

In addition, the recommendation to Cabinet was that the floodproofing and relocation options should come in at an average cost of $100,000 per property (ie some would cost more and some less). But the Minister announced that the program would pay up to $100,000 for either option. This “hard cap” became the subject of almost weekly debate at our meetings. Many of us favored the “average cost” approach arguing that money saved on moving a smaller home for example could be redirected to the higher costs of moving a larger home. The government felt the “hard cap” would control costs. They never budged from this position and it is a fact that I think they were wrong!
 

So now this program is pretty much wrapped up. Where do we go from here? There are a lot of roads we could take and I hope we have the collective wisdom to work together to get it right. We all have our opinions but this article is “just the facts ma’am” so…..