Village rate fight intensifies
Commission, council off to the URB
SHERBROOKE - The Sherbrooke Restoration Commission has taken its long-standing battle with the District of St. Mary's over water and sewage rates to the Nova Scotia Utilities and Review Board (URB).
The commission, which oversees Historic Sherbrooke Village, and the municipality have been at loggerheads for several years. At issue is the annual $35,000 bill paid by the village to the council for water and sewer usage.
The commission accepts that the sum was agreed to as part of an open-ended contract signed with the municipality in 1989. At that time, a grant from the province covered the cost of the water and sewage.
However commission chair Roland Burton believes the municipality - which he says is now far stronger financially in the wake of payments for the Sable gas pipeline - should have since agreed to sit down and hammer out a more reasonable agreement.
Burton contends that when the agreement was signed, Sherbrooke Village was in a much stronger financial position than it is today. Burton also says the village's bill, if based on usage alone, would amount to about $11,000.
Early last week the commission decided to take its case to the URB.
"The current billing is based on an agreement that was signed between the municipality and the Sherbrooke Restoration Commission in 1989, and amended in 1991," the commission's URB submission - signed by Burton and also sent to St Mary's Warden David Clark, MLA Ronnie Chisholm and Nova Scotia Museum Director Bill Greenlaw - reads.
"Times were different then, when the municipality was not benefiting from natural gas pipeline tax assessments and the historic village was solvent from a boom in tourism and assistance from the province with utility bills.
"Today, the situation is reversed. The municipality's audit statements show an annual operating surplus while the historic village is in a deficit situation, with no major improvement in sight. Additionally, the province no longer assists with the village's water and sewer bills.
"The commission feels strongly that the situation is unfair. The municipality has been approached, numerous times, to allow the village to simply pay for what it uses, like any other user, without success."
It goes on to say that the village is seeking "cancellation of the original 1989 agreement and permission to pay for Sherbrooke Historic Village water and sewer services…at standard rates."
The municipality, meanwhile highlighted its decision to give the village a one-off $10,000 break last year to help offset its money woes.
"There has been a couple of attempts at (negotiations with the commission)," said District of St. Mary's deputy warden James Harpell. "We wanted the province to come to the table - the museum itself is the province's (responsibility).
"I think the $35,000 a year, that was at the top (end of the payment scale). That was (based on) the amount of funding Sherbrooke Village got (from the province). When the funding went down, so did the rates. I would think (the village is paying) somewhere around $22,000."
