Difference of opinion

Owner of horse farm in Cornwall bypass path wants arbitration over government expropriation of land

The owner of a therapeutic horse farm in the path of the Cornwall bypass says a government appraisal for her property is off by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ellen Jones owns the HughesJones Centre for People and Animals, which will either have to move or shut down because it is along the bypass route.

Her centre is one of the properties the government is expropriating and she said the province’s appraisal differed significantly from one her appraiser prepared.

“There was no middle ground and all of a sudden lawyers were involved,” she said.

The Hughes-Jones Centre for People and Animals houses 16 horses used to help at-risk youth and people with anxiety.

To continue the bypass project, the provincial government will have to buy the properties it needs, leaving Jones trying to get what she says is a fair deal.

That includes the government taking into consideration the centre’s impact in the community and the cost of having to relocate.

She didn’t disclose the government’s offer, but said there was a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars between each side’s assessments.

Jones wants the matter to go to arbitration and said the centre’s team believes in its case.

“We don’t want to screw over the Island taxpayer and we don’t want to get rich off of this,” she said.

The goal is to rebuild in a different location within the same community, Jones said, but that’s something she didn’t think could happen with the expropriation offer.

Steve Yeo, the province’s chief engineer, said he thinks the province has been fair and there is an internal government policy to offer the independent appraised value plus 10 per cent.

“They look at it from a different perspective. They want a lot more money for it and we’re just not there because of our independent appraisal,” he said.

As the government proceeds toward expropriation, landowners have a right to take the matter to the courts, Yeo said.

The provincial government owns land in the area after buying it for a prior bypass plan that didn’t go ahead.

Yeo said the government made a two-tiered offer to Jones that included giving the centre land of comparable size to what it currently uses so it could relocate.

Government also offered to let the centre use the land it’s on for several months after the purchase to help transition to a new location, Yeo said.

“We’ve been very fair with negotiating with them and we don’t understand what they’re really looking for.”