Harbour Grace hoping money will pour in from water metre move

By Craig Westcott/January 20, 2023

The Town of Harbour Grace has found a way to tap into a potentially lucrative new revenue source.

At this past month’s public meeting, councillor Lee Rogers made a motion that the Town write the Division of Small Craft Harbours in the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans telling them a water metre will be installed at their expense to measure the amount of municipal water supplied at their premises in the harbour.

Rogers said Small Craft Harbours will then be billed at a rate of $2.50 per 1,000 gallons.

Mayor Don Coombs noted the fee is included in this year’s new Tax Structure.

Deputy Mayor Keith Skinner seconded the motion, which passed unanimously.

In an interview later, Coombs said it’s an important development for the town revenue wise. The Harbour Authority, which operates at the wharf, is about to undergo a $6.2 million upgrade, and is a large user of Town water.

“The Harbour Authority in Harbour Grace is a big, big business,” Coombs said. “They have probably six or seven major companies in Newfoundland that do a lot of business down there with crab and shrimp and capelin and other fish species, and we’re providing the water down there.”

Coombs said the Town checked with other municipalities that charge for similar services.

“It’s $2.50 for a thousand gallons and you’re looking at down there from April to September the water is going flat out,” the mayor added. “I look at neighbouring towns like Old Perlican and those with fish businesses and that’s a big revenue generator, and we need it right now in the town of Harbour Grace… Now we will charge them, and it will be metered and we’ll know exactly what it is and the Harbour Authority will be billed on a monthly or quarterly basis and they will figure out how to divide it up among their people. So, it’s a big day for the Town of Harbour Grace revenue wise.”

Coombs said the meter will be installed when the upgrades get underway at the Harbour Authority.

In other council news, the Town is seeking a meeting with the Minister of Municipal Affairs to see if there is any financial support to be found for the Danny Cleary Community Centre.

Coombs said the arena is costing a tremendous amount of money.

“Besides the $120,000 a year just on the loan payments, we’re running a deficit there,” he said. “This council has taken on the challenge of getting it in order. We’ve done a lot of things with rates and everything. We feel as a municipality that it’s a regional facility and we want to go in and meet with the minister to see if there is anything we can do regionally to get a subsidy. I’m sure there are other municipalities in the province looking at the same thing. That facility was built in 2013 and the government has got $18 million gone into it. We’ve got $3 million (in it), but we just can’t keep up the subsidy that we’re putting into it… We feel it’s a regional facility and the taxpayers of Harbour Grace are the ones taking on the burden.”

Besides the loan payments, the centre is costing Harbour Grace about $20,000 a month in operating costs, Coombs noted.

“I spoke with a former deputy minister who told me that the minister of the day was advised that you’ve got to put a subsidy in for the Town of Harbour Grace, that they would never be able to afford to operate that facility as is,” Coombs said. “So, we’re going to go in and sit down and we’re going to have our figures done on what it’s costing the taxpayers, because we can’t run a $150,000 or $200,000 deficit every year, we can’t do it. That money has got to be paid back.”

Most of the arena’s users are actually from outside Harbour Grace, Coombs added.

“We’ve got our stats done on all that. But we just want to go in and meet with the minister… and see if there is something we can come up with. The hardest part of (completing) our budget was the Danny Cleary Community Centre.”

Coombs said council has been working hard to straighten out the Town’s finances so that it can afford more big infrastructure and other projects.

Council will look at the possibility of erecting storyboards telling how the late Bud Chafe and some other residents saved the historic one room Otterbury schoolhouse from being lost to time and the elements.

The suggestion actually came from newly elected councillor Rex Barns, who was unable to make the last public council meeting because of illness. So, his request was made by councillor Rogers and heartily taken up by the mayor.

“I was on council with the late councillor Chafe when that building was set to go away,” said Coombs. “Councillor Chafe stood up in the chambers and said, ‘I’ll have it moved.’ And he got his family and he got Gary McCarthy and his family and within days we provided floaters and they had that moved up in a day.”

According to information on Harbour Grace’s Conception Bay Museum website, the school served mostly Roman Catholic children from the Riverhead and Otterbury areas from 1889 to 1969 when it closed. It was located on the west end of Water Street, and like many one room schoolhouses around the island, was heated by a pot-bellied stove fuel by donations of wood from the families of the students. In the late 1990s, with the schoolhouse falling into disrepair from so many years of laying idle, Gordon G. Pike and other members of the Harbour Grace Historical Society took on the task of fixing it up. Years later, when the schoolhouse started showing the effects of time and weather again, it looked like it might finally come to ruin, especially as a question arose about who actually owned the land where the school was situated, Coombs noted.

But that’s when councillor Albert (Bud) Chafe stepped in to lead an effort to move the building from its location on Water Street to the area near the Spirit of Harbour Grace airplane monument in Riverhead.

Chafe and his fellow volunteers laid down a moving structure of logs to roll the old building to its new site, where it was fixed up again.

Coombs said the Town has used whatever funding opportunities it’s been able to get to keep the building in good shape since then.

“It’s beautiful and we have some big plans for it,” said the mayor. “A storyboard (dedicated) to Albert Chafe, the late councillor and a friend of mine, would be appropriate, and I’m glad councillor Rogers brought it up. That building would not be where it’s at today for people to view if not for Bud Chafe taking it on. The Chafes and the McCarthys are big workers in this town. We provided a little bit of equipment, they cut the logs and we rolled that up a quarter of a kilometre.”

Coombs said there is a piano in the building and council is looking at using it as a place to host seniors’ groups. 

“We’ve applied to the government for the Crown Land to tie it in with the plane and the walkway to the Gates of Harbour Grace,” said Coombs. “I truly believe that if it wasn’t for Bud Chafe that may have gone under the gun, but Bud wasn’t going to let that happen.”