Yarmouth town council has a hammer and everything looks like a nail
If you are a property owner or renter in the Town of Yarmouth, you should buy a copy of the Vanguard every week and hire a lawyer to help you read town advertisements.
A recent advertisement is that they want to amend the town bylaws to allow private businesses to locate in arts and community centres in a number of zones. The town tells you in the section called, ‘How Will This Affect Me?’ that “More art and community centers will build up community identity and pride. It will increase people coming into the town to spend money locally and improve the image of the town.” Maybe.
I do not question that our town council is determined to get their arts centre, but this advertisement proves that the manipulation of the townspeople is not beneath them. They should omit the section of ‘How Will This Affect Me?’ if they are going to be deliberately one-sided in describing the possible impact.
What they are proposing could have a significant impact on nearby property owners. If an arts or community centre is built beside you, not only is there permission for unknown government services and non-profit organizations to use the property, but now they will have business and commercial enterprises as well. Whatever is originally promised for use can change dramatically afterwards, and not always to the benefit of the people residing closely to it.
The province of Nova Scotia created zoning laws that spell out in specific detail what can take place, or what can occupy certain zones so that the rights of the property owners will be protected. All these protections and rights that you likely assume you have, however, are an illusion if your town government de- cides they want something else. They can simply pass an amendment, as they did regarding the land beside my property, that no matter what the zone is for a building, it can be used for purposes that would be illegal in that zone otherwise.
The provincial Municipal Act gives a town the power to create amendments that can make the protection of zoning laws meaningless. The provincial ombudsman informed me that town councils have no legal obligation to follow administrative law and procedural fairness. They can pass amendments that gut the zoning laws provided they follow a process. All they have to do is hold council votes and public meetings long after they have already made the decision.
By the time the unlucky property owner gets a mailed notice from the town it’s likely too late to change council’s mind. In our case the food bank was moved in, set up and operating months ahead of town council votes and public participation meetings to see if it would even be allowed in that location. Before the public participation meeting, two newspaper articles and radio announcements declared the decision had been made and even gave proposed opening times. No wonder our provincial ombudsman said to me the optics of this situation is terrible.
Read town file #66560-35-18(2009) where it says that the town is committed to 1, 2, 6 (current food bank location) and 8 Herbert Street to be residential because zoning had to be “… in a coherent fashion rather than a “spot”, or “leap –frog” designation affect.” Translation, in this statement of town future intent, the town said zoning holes in this exact location was a bad thing and should not be allowed, but that is what they now have done.
Don’t expect the town to mitigate damage caused by their decisions. I reminded the town of their previous promises of how this property would be used and asked them to place the food bank in one of their other properties that was already legally zoned for it. If they refused, I asked that fencing and other guarantees be put in place to lessen the impact. If the town had been willing to do this, I would have still been angry at the town breaking promises, but I would have dropped my protests because of my respect for the food bank and the important function it serves.
Past behaviours are a clear warning of future actions by the town. We have people in council who are genuinely committed to their vision of how they wish to change Yarmouth and that’s not always a bad thing. But if council wants to really improve the image of the town it needs to use its power more carefully and be more responsive to what the citizens of Yarmouth really want, rather than pushing ahead with their own priorities. Hold an official referendum, not just a poll which can be manipulated, to see if the taxpayers of Yarmouth really want to fund the proposed art centre in that location or would prefer the money to go to the Mariners Centre. A small fortune has already been spent on the study connected to creating an art centre with more town money on studies to follow. Let’s officially find out if this is the direction that the majority of Yarmouth people want.
More arts centres, when Th’YARC is looking to establish itself out of town because of heavy handed town tactics, seems expensive and unnecessary. The old Arcadia school is huge and with some financial support from the town to Th’YARC our talented artisans could be also established there at a fraction of the cost of what a new centre would cost. Underground parking and disruption of one of the busiest sections of downtown could be avoided. Establishment of multiple competing arts and community centres in town and county mean that that some will be underutilized with the result of a massive future taxpayer loss maintaining these facilities.
Stephanie Eldridge,
Yarmouth