CBS deals with Province’s new red tape

By Craig Westcott

Some peculiarities of the Province’s new Act governing municipalities has forced CBS council to rescind motions it had already passed in preparation for this fall’s election and replace them with slightly reworded ones.
The new Towns and Local Services District Act came into force earlier this year replacing the long-established Municipalities Act. The change has seen towns across the province revamp and pass swaths of new bylaws and amendments, most of them involving only minor changes to old ones, in order to be in compliance with the new Act.
At last week’s public council meeting, council learned that some of those changes necessitated alterations to the steps the Town had already put in place for the coming October 2 municipal general election.
“On April 15 council passed Resolution 25-096 to set the Nomination of Candidates to be held on September 4, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.,” said Deputy Mayor Andrea Gosse. “Due to using Vote by Mail, the Elections Act (in the new legislation) requires the hours to be 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Considering the reduced hours, we are bringing recommendations forward that the nominations be accepted on both September 3, 2025, and September 4, 2025 between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.”
Council voted unanimously to approve the change.
“Some of the things in the new legislation to me make absolutely no sense whatsoever,” said Mayor Darrin Bent. “We’ve dealt with a number of them, but we have to comply, we have no choice in these things, so here we are. We can’t open the nominations past 5 o’clock for people. To offset the rules, we’ve decided to open it for a second day, which is absolutely no problem, but still, it would have made more sense to allow us to accept nominations from 8 to 8 on a day or two. But here we are… So, we’ll follow the rules, we’ll get in line, I guess and pass this.”
With that one squared away, council then had to pass a new motion regarding the Vote by Mail system, replacing the one already on the books. That too passed unanimously.