Airport spat erupts
Published Thursday November 5th, 2009
City of Dieppe, airport at odds over development priorities
A simmering disagreement between the Greater Moncton International Airport and the City of Dieppe over what is the development priority for the airport area came to a boil Monday when airport general manager Rob Robichaud ordered a construction crew to stop its work extending Aviation Avenue.
That has upset Dieppe Mayor Jean LeBlanc, who suggests the move was retaliation for the city prioritizing an improved Dieppe Boulevard/Harrisville Boulevard overpass ahead of an overpass to improve how motorists exit the airport.
Currently, people arriving at the airport and headed into the metropolitan area either have to tour an industrial area or make a counter-intuitive turn to the east on Highway 15 and use the interchange with Highway 2, the Trans-Canada Highway, to get turned back around.
"I don't appreciate Rob's approach," LeBlanc said yesterday, adding that the City of Dieppe does consider a new airport overpass over Veterans Highway a priority too, just not their main one.
"Everybody agrees that we have to have a proper one. It's not if, it's when there should be an overpass," LeBlanc said.
However, Robichaud said he acted Monday because the legal work behind the road extension and a proposed land swap have not been completed, though he acknowledged he was dismayed to learn Dieppe's mayor recently sent a letter to Premier Shawn Graham saying an improved Harrisville Boulevard overpass was council's first wish.
Robichaud said that is a two-fold problem for the airport in that it only serves the interests of Dieppe, and because adding capacity to the Harrisville interchange diminishes the chance provincial and federal funding partners would agree to funding a nearby airport overpass afterward.
That issue aside, Robichaud says he is acting to prevent the Aviation Avenue work because a memorandum of understanding signed back in 2006 has yet to be formalized with a written contract.
"It's been three years. That seems an inordinate length of time," Robichaud said. The memorandum came about after the airport agreed to work with Dieppe's economic development office in securing Transport Canada's blessing to turn airport lands over to Dieppe for development.
LeBlanc said yesterday the memorandum was essentially a contract with all necessary details but for "the Queen's signature." Robichaud said he nevertheless wants to see a formal signed contract, has been asking for that for a long time, and was dissatisfied with the one legal document he got Friday, which he described as only addressing maintenance of Aviation Avenue. And at that, he argued the document presented to the airport Friday didn't accurately reflect the caveats agreed to in the 2006 memorandum.
LeBlanc further argued Robichaud was not acting with the approval of the airport authority on Monday, but Robichaud said it was his duty to act quickly and at his discretion when he saw legal problems with the work starting. Robichaud said he had been in contact with his political masters at the authority, and no doubt this will dominate discussion when that body meets today.
Further, Robichaud said, "this land is still federal government land. We're basically guardians of it." Anyone who wants to develop on federal land must have a facility alteration permit, and Robichaud said his staff can find no record of such a permit being issued.
"I'd dearly love to get this resolved, but it has to be based on mutual trust and an ethical basis," Robichaud said.
"The clock is running and the contractors are charging us for that," Dieppe's mayor said, arguing Robichaud had no legal authority to try and stop the contractors from working.
With all that said, the contractors were back doing some work in the area yesterday. However, it appears the issues between the parties are still some way from being resolved.
More The News
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
Comments (3)
All comments are subject to the site Terms of Use. For a full commenting tutorial click here.
Our editorial team relies on filtering technology and our visitor community to identify inappropriate comments. In the event that a site user has submitted offensive content that has evaded our filter, please select the option to Flag As Inappropriate presented within the comment. Thank you for helping to keep this site clean.
nose up in the air, henchemen. No accountability, no fair play and no moral, they rob their citizens of their land for industrial use and sell it
as commercial land ,afterwards, making large sums of money taken off the backs of hard working citizens. Shame on the people involved, you will have to face your maker with this under your belt, good luck, you know who you are.