3+ Corporation<\/a>, will be subsumed into a new organization to serve the entire southeast region, tentatively called Economic Development 360. Currently the three cities pay about $400,000 to run 3+ Corporation, and the SERSC prorated that across the larger region to come up with the total figure of $700,000. That amount includes hiring at least one director, and one consultant to help create the new organization.<\/p>\nThe next highest new budget item for the commission is Social and Community Development, for which municipalities will contribute about half as much as they will for economic development. The total budget for Social and Community Development includes some existing grants, and comes to $460,000, with about $15,000 coming from Tantramar.<\/p>\n
The commission will hire one director and two coordinators for social and community development, as well as a consultant to help it develop a strategy for 2024 and beyond.<\/p>\n
Three more services will share a single new director to be hired in 2023: regional transportation, regional recreation infrastructure, and tourism. Tantramar\u2019s contributions to all three add up to about $13,000.<\/p>\n
All in all, the commission plans to hire three new directors at salaries of roughly $110,000 each, plus two new coordinators and one specialist. It will also spend about $160,000 on consultants to help with strategy development in 2023. It has already created a new CEO position and hired the former head of solid waste at Eco360, Roland Leblanc, to fill that role.<\/p>\n
Gerard Belliveau is due to return to his role as executive director once he\u2019s finished his work for the province as a facilitator for local government reform.<\/p>\n
Steering committees to be appointed for new services<\/h2>\n
Thorne told council last week that the commission has been hosting working groups over the past few months to help come up with its budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur approach for the new mandated services was one of listening, rather than trying to jump in and figure it out all on our own, so we created working groups for each of the new services,\u201d said Thorne. Those working groups included some Sackville town staff, such as special projects manager Kieran Miller, as well as representatives from other organizations and stakeholder groups. \u201cWe had over 100 meetings between May in June, which was a feat that none of us thought we could do. But we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very eye opening to see groups that are working in the same sector who have never met before and have never talked,\u201d said Thorne. \u201cSo duplication of services was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thorne didn\u2019t provide examples of duplicated services, but did acknowledge that in many cases the commission need not reinvent the wheel. \u201dWhat came out of those meetings was a lot of suggestions on how we can approach this,\u201d said Thorne. \u201cWe really need to build on the existing assets, because great work is being done by so many different groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thorne said the commission would establish steering committees for each new service, and a \u201cbaseline of what needs to happen across each service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thorne said the commission has identified major issues that are \u201cin crisis mode right now,\u201d such as the workforce, homelessness and affordable housing. \u201cSo the commission is working, even now, to start getting those in place, even though the mandate doesn\u2019t start until January 1.\u201d<\/p>\n
A number of councillors had questions for Thorne after her presentation, including Sabine Dietz who said she was surprised at the small size of the $1.5 million budget for the five new mandated services. \u201cI\u2019m assuming that this will only increase over time,\u201d said Dietz.<\/p>\n
Thorne agreed. \u201cWe really wanted to put the work in to make sure that we\u2019re not just asking members for a bunch of money right off, when we don\u2019t know what we\u2019re going to do with it\u2026 We can take the year to really build a strategy, and the 2024 budget will look much different from this,\u201d said Thorne.<\/p>\n
Dietz also asked about representation on the various steering committees that will be overseeing the new services. Thorne said the steering committees had not yet been formed and the board of the SERSC would decide who to included. Thorne mentioned stakeholders, \u201cfrom industry, from the community, not-for-profit groups, from our staff, and then I\u2019m sure that we will reach out to any staff members within the municipalities that may be vital,\u201d said Thorne.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe staff will be absolutely informed, but with your mayor sitting on the board, that\u2019s where the decision making comes in,\u201d said Thorne.<\/p>\n
Listen to the CHMA story below:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of Minister Daniel Allain\u2019s local government reform plan, commissions such as the South East Regional Service Commission (SERSC) will expand the number of services they provide, for which municipalities like the new town of Tantramar are required to pay. Currently, the SERSC operates Eco360 and Plan360, handling garbage disposal and planning services for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":122357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,225],"tags":[7639,3619,832,19792,19793],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122577,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122325\/revisions\/122577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122325"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=122325"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=122325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}