Inverness County's June 4 Council Meeting

CHNE hosted a panel discussion on Inverness County's latest council meeting with a focus on the northern part of the county. The guests were Chief Administrative Officer Keith MacDonald, District 1 Councillor Alfred Poirier (Chéticamp/Pleasant Bay/Meat Cove) and District 2 Councillor Laurie Cranton (Margaree/St. Joseph).

The Chéticamp Ground Search and Rescue has requested $5 000 in funding for its operations, equipment and infrastructure maintenance. Chéticamp councillor Poirier said the group has been providing service to areas inside and outside the community, including the mainland. “The biggest problem is like any organization now -- volunteers are hard enough to get to do the work,” he said, “Plus, if you have to do all the fundraising in order to keep operating, it is a burden. Like I said, it’s not like it used to be 10, 20, 25 years ago. … It is one opportunity for them to go and check it out to see how it can be spread out a little bit fairer for them because mostly, all the money is coming from locals and they are going all across.”

CAO Keith MacDonald said that council is considering the group’s request “in a positive light,” but that the municipality needs to do more research before issuing the money. “There are a number of search and rescue organizations that have jurisdiction in Inverness County,” he said,” and we’re trying to get a handle on that: who is responsible for each particular areas and how they’re going to cooperate in the future.” Currently, the municipality provides the Strait Area Search and Rescue organization $5 000. MacDonald said the county will be looking into how to invest funding fairly between all the groups.

Council also talked about its concerns regarding the October municipal election and COVID-19. “The province has decided to go forward with the election, so we all have to do that,” Councillor Cranton said. “I know our municipality is taking extra measures to make sure it’s done in a safe and responsible way under the COVID-19 recommendations. We are looking at how people would enter the polls and exit polls, accessibility to the polls, having the proper hand sanitizers and masks available, all that stuff that one would do to make sure they meet the rules around the public and the pandemic.” 

All aspects of the election will be different this year. “Some councillors are, I think, a little concerned about how they will campaign if they need to in this election where you won’t be able to go out to home to home,” said Councillor Craton. “You’re going have to come up with other means to do so. I use a wheelchair, so I don’t usually do that, go home to home, I usually use the phone a lot. So, not a lot of change for me.” Both Councillor Cranton and Councillor Poirier will be running for re-election.

Municipalities across the province are considering different variations of digital voting. Dernie Gillis, the Returning Officer in charge of the Inverness County election is recommending electronic voting for advanced polls and traditional polling stations on the day of the election. 

Another important part of the last council meeting was a presentation on the 2020-2021 operational budget provided by Director of Finance Tanya Tibbo. “Basically, we’re looking at a balanced budget this year, just over $17 million with no increases in terms of taxes,” MacDonald said. “It was a very difficult budget to put together in terms of forecasting revenue. The majority of the revenue goes approximately 90% through tax payers, so in this current situation with COVID-19, we have to take a lot of considerations in terms of when people are going to be able to pay their taxes and such. On top of that, some additional revenue that the municipality relies upon… we just have to estimate a little but more.”

The CAO said that over 30% of the municipality’s revenue go into mandatory costs, mainly to police services and education. “We’re talking multi-million-dollar contributions,” MacDonald said. “It does create a difficult situation for the municipality.”

To get more details about the latest council meeting, watch the panel discussion here.