Moncton’s Mayor is encouraging the provincial government to get moving on modernizing the Municipalities Act.
Dawn Arnold says the legislation is 49 years old, and is long overdue for an update.
She says it will be an enormous task, and should be started as soon as possible.
“Alberta recently updated theirs, and it had last been updated in 1995, and even that took four years, so I’m personally not willing to wait four, five years to get this legislation in place,” says Arnold. “We need to move a lot faster than that.”
Arnold says the timeframe for a full update can take several years, and hopes smaller changes can be made in the interim.
She says booting is a great example, where giving Cities the power the legislate booters would make a huge difference.
“Perhaps there’s a way we can have the authority to do that, because changing the Act to suddenly allow us jurisdiction on private is probably too lofty a goal, but maybe there’s a way around it because 49 years ago there weren’t booting situations,” says Arnold.
She says there are many issues today that weren’t present when it was written almost a half century ago.
“It’s everything from booting to pesticide use, having a little bit of flexibility in the taxes, if we want to incentivize downtown growth, is there a way to disincentivize sprawl,” says Arnold. “All that kind of thing, those are the issues.”
Arnold says the provincial leaders are asking for a meeting with Local Government Minister Serge Rousselle to get the process started.
