Councillor Claims County Losing Out On Municipal Tax Sales Revenue

ARICHAT - Some Richmond County municipal councillors are not convinced that the municipality is receiving its fair share of revenue from municipal tax sales, and at least one councillor is claiming that this inattention to detail could be costing the county hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

In a special segment produced for the latest edition of TELILE 24/7, conversations at back-to-back municipal council meetings in late 2022 - specifically, the December 12 Committee of the Whole session and the regular monthly meeting held just one week later, on December 19 - show that the county is gearing up for several tax sales on municipal properties. The official definition of a tax sale is a public auction that sees a property with unpaid taxes sold to another buyer that bids an amount matching or exceeding the unpaid tax revenue. 

However, at both meetings, District Two councillor Michael Diggdon took issue with Richmond's handling of several properties, suggesting that county coffers are missing out on significant tax revenue as a result. 

"We're giving land away - we may not have use for it, but we're giving it away for nothing," Diggdon insisted at the Committee of the Whole meeting. 

Also on this week's TELILE 24/7:

* 2:16: Having received an extension from the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB) to extend a public consultation process on municipal boundaries and the preferred number of councillors for the municipality, Richmond Warden Amanda Mombourquette is hopeful that a new round of meetings in January and early February will provide council with more feedback than it received when these questions first came up this past summer. 

* 10:00: The CEO of the Eastern Counties Regional Library network, Laura Emery, and a representative of the library's St. Peter's branch, Clair Rankin, are hopeful that the county will consider funding a relocation of the village's ECRL operations to a new community hub to be established at the former Nova Scotia Liquor Commission building on Grenville Street. 

* 34:57: Two motions from the Committee of the Whole meeting, passed at the following week's regular meeting, will see Richmond councillors sign a loan guarantee for a sidewalk snow removal apparatus for the Village of St. Peter's, while also providing a letter of support to the River Roots Community Garden in nearby River Bourgeois. 

* 55:43: Richmond councillors have accepted an offer from Nova Scotia's Property Valuation Services Corporation (PVSC) for a refresher course on the province's municipal-taxation system. 

* 57:44: Richmond Warden Amanda Mombourquette will contact SaltWire Media in the hopes of reversing the company's recent decision regarding the end of delivery of two of the firm's biggest daily newspapers, The Chronicle-Herald and The Cape Breton Post, to rural communities such as those found in Richmond County.