Consultant says Tantramar council and senior town staff will draft 5-yr. strategic plan behind closed doors |

Craig Pollett, vice president of Strategic Steps. The Atlantic branch of the company is based in Nfld & Labrador

Consultant Craig Pollett says Tantramar Town Council and senior staff will hammer out the final details of the municipality’s strategic plan at closed-door meetings in September.

“The sessions won’t be open to the public,” he said on Tuesday during the last of three public consultation drop-ins at the Sackville Music Barn on Station Road.

Pollett, whose firm Strategic Steps is being paid $42,100 to help develop the plan, says councillors and staff will participate in day-long workshops to come up with the plan after  sifting through the results of the public drop-in sessions, interviews with various stakeholders and an online survey.

When asked if his firm would write the plan, he said no. That would be up to members of council and senior staff.

“They’re actually doing the writing. At the end of the workshop, they’re saying ‘Yeah, we’re comfortable with that, we’re comfortable with that.’ We will take that and create a document out of it, but we don’t change their language or anything like that. We take what they came up with.”

Pollett gave a number of reasons why the workshops would not be open to the public.

“I would have difficulty inviting the public to an event that they can’t engage in,” he said.

“This is an opportunity for this council who are the board of directors, if you will, for the organization and that’s the kind of strategic plan we’re writing here, a strategic plan for the corporate entity known as the Municipality of Tantramar,” he added.

“They have to own this plan as a council. They have to be free to have the discussion and focus in that workshop because a two-day workshop for this kind of thing is actually not a long time. It’s a heavy amount of work to do in two days and it’s difficult work to do, not that we’re hiding anything, but just with an audience or with other people in the room who, all they can do is watch you,” Pollett said.

“Council needs two distraction-free days to focus on getting the best out of them for this plan,” he concluded.

Note: On Tuesday, I e-mailed Mayor Black and all members of council as well as CAO Jennifer Borne and Town Clerk Donna Beal asking that they hold these sessions in public so that Warktimes can cover them. So far, I have not heard back from them.

To read my e-mail, click here.

To read the full text of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling I refer to in my e-mail, click here.