No benefit to merging with Antigonish

Some thoughts about the proposed marriage between Antigonish town and county:

The deed is proposed to be done at an in camera meeting of all the councillors only.

This cannot be allowed to happen, because representatives of the county, with a population almost three times that of the population of the town, number only about two-thirds of those representing the town.

I think we can figure out what the decision is going to be when we consider that:

1. We in the county have our own good water systems, not a chemically treated one. For the latter, we would have to find a clean lake or pond, keep it that way, install miles of pipe to bring the water to us, build a water treatment plant and pay salaries for people to maintain and run it.

2. The town has an aging system, probably with steel pipes that are old and soon in need of replacement. They would love to have the county’s money to do that, since they don’t have much money and the county has a sizable surplus.

3. Our tax rate is lower than the town’s. I am sure they would like to have three times the population to draw from. With the inflated prices that property is selling for, we can expect upward assessments of our properties anyhow. Add a tax rate increase to that and ...

4. We in the county don’t have much in the way of libraries, playgrounds, swimming pools, streetlights, etc., to maintain, but the town has a lot. Why should we pay for it?

5. We built and paid for our fire department. For some reason, I don’t think the amalgamated body will use our tax dollars to maintain our fire department system.

6. Seems we don’t need as much police protection as the town does. Why should we pay for it?

Maybe I’m missing something, but I do not see one benefit to being part of the town.

These and other concerns need to be addressed.

We live in a democracy, not an autocracy. We need public discussion on this so we can let our feelings be known to our councillors. Then we need a plebiscite, so we can all vote on the matter. Only then can our democratic right be exercised.

We just retired and moved back here to the area we love. If prices go up, we and a lot of “newbies” may have to move out and find a more economical county to live in.