By: Tim Jaques, The Tribune

Village council concentrated on two land-related issues when it met at a relatively short regular monthly meeting on July 13. All council was present except for Paul Daley. Non-councillors present were CAO David Hughes; Village Clerk Brenda Cormier; and Community Development Officer Andy Flanagan.

 

Snowmobile club

Hughes in his report to council advised that the Supervillage Trailblazers Snowmobile Club had asked the village for $35,000 to purchase the 200 acre property on which sits their clubhouse. This property formerly had been leased from Smurfit-Stone. The club does not have the money to acquire the land.

Hughes advised that he had met with a Mr. MacIntosh from the club, and negotiated some clauses which could form the basis for a memorandum of understanding should council agree.

(1) Should the club become insolvent, the 200 acres would become the

property of the village.

(2) If the land is sold, the full $35,000 will be refunded to the

village.

(3) There will be no clearcutting or commercial cutting on the land.

(4) Any deal is subject to there being sufficient funds in the

budget, about which council was not certain at the time of the first discussions.

(5) The village's legal council would do a memorandum of

understanding and could also highlight any other concerns.

Hughes said that he believed this would protect the village from any risk, in that the village would end up with the 200 acres or its money back.


 

A motion was made and seconded to go ahead on these terms. However, Councillor Elaine Levesque-Godin moved that the motion be tabled until the next meeting in order to get more background on the matter.

Councillor Jerry Guitard seconded this, saying he wanted more information too. The motion to table passed, with Deputy Mayor Emmie Flanagan voting against tabling. Mayor Nick Duivenvoorden said that it would come up again at the first meeting in August.

 

Other business

Council resolved to make up to $400 in funding available to buy a canopy swing as per a request by Noella Lapointe made at an earlier meeting.

This is subject to any liability concerns being worked out.Belledune will host the opening of the Nepisiquit Family Services on Oct. 4. There will be lunch, games, and prizes. Duivenvoorden agreed to act as MC.

The 2010 village calendars will be finalized on July 22, when the judges meet.

The contract for the municipal building cleaning was extended for another year on the same terms, that is, $350 a month; $300 for a special spring cleaning; and any other cleaning at $8 an hour.

The first step was taken to amend the Rural Plan to rezone the Xstrata quarry property so that the Port of Belledune can quarry aggregate there.

The village will consider the local Legion in its 2010 budget. In the past, it gave it $80,000 for renovations, plus a new pool table.

Levesque-Godin advised that the Legion is fundraising for maintenance work.

Council received an invitation to the unveiling of a memorial in Ottawa to the veterans of the Battle of Hong Kong on Aug. 15 at 11 a.m. The village was once home to several Hong Kong vets, with one remaining alive, and the village gave $3,000 towards the wall. The mayor has a commitment and cannot go. However, Deputy Mayor Emmie Flanagan and her brother, Community Development Officer Andy Flanagan, are both attending. Their late father was a Hong Kong vet.

Lagoon land

Flanagan moved that the village exercise its option to purchase on two properties where the village hopes to build a new sewerage lagoon.

Levesque-Godin said that she has been approached by several citizens about the proposed location of the lagoon. She noted that there were some concerns as to this project.

Guitard questioned why the land had to be purchased before the required Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was done.

Cormier explained that there was a July 31 deadline by which the options had to be exercised on the property.

Guitard wondered what would happen if the land was purchased, and then the EIA said that the land couldn't be used for this purpose. He asked whether the option couldn't be extended until the EIA was done.

Cormier explained that this could happen, if the landowners were willing to do so. If they weren't, a special meeting would have to be held to pass a resolution to buy the land. There were other timelines in place because of the need to send registered letters, so the timeline was actually shorter than July 31.

Hughes said that if the EIA required a change of location, the village simply would have property there it would have to sell. Guitard replied that in his view, the village already had too much land on its hands.

Considerable discussion was then held as to what procedural measures could be taken at that point to change the motion to address Guitard's concerns, and to make the acceptance conditional on the EIA. In the end, the motion was amended to seek an extension of the option from the two vendors, to make the acceptance condition on the EIA approval, subject to legal counsel seeing no other issue to making these amendments.

There is no guarantee that the vendors will accept the new terms, nor are they required to do so. Council did not discuss what it would do if the vendors refused to accept the new terms to extend the options on the land on new terms, or if the vendors demanded further financial consideration to agree to the new terms.

After the public portion of the meeting was done, residents in attendance complained bitterly to council that they did not want a sewerage lagoon near their homes. This had been the subject of a public meeting in early June. Hughes explained that the lagoon will be closer to the homes than had been stated in an earlier engineer's report because it will be cheaper to do so.

Cormier said after the meeting that the options on the two pieces of land had been purchased for $500 each.