The November meeting was attended by around 30 citizens.
Mayor Wisdom presided over the meeting and announced that
the Town of Brome lake is being forced to overturn an existing
bylaw forbidding the installation of windmills on the Lac Brome
jurisdiction.
It was also announced that the closing of this fiscal year will
show the town has a slight surplus in the coffers. He also announced
some new environmental projects to be undertaken in Lac Brome
for the 2007 year. These measures include having a new inspector
who will be assigned to Brome Lake. There will also be other posts
created spedically for maintaining special attention to the waterways
and the lake.
As well some improvements to the downtown core will get underway
in 2007 including improvements to parking at Tiffany Park, maintenance
on some dirt roads and better public signage.
During Question Period
The issue of businessess being forced to conform to local signage
bylaws was again brought up as one business owner noted that such
company signs like the bright glowing Ultra-Mar sign in West Brome
were recently installed and against the bylaw. The mayor had to
admit that such multi-national companies would likely just ignore
such bylaws.The signage issue
This is another example of why it is so hard to undertake tasks
like cleaning up the environment when large corporations, often
the ones most responsible for pollution, can just do whatever
they please!
The issue of the Brome Lake and her health problems was visited
and the Renaissance Lac Brome meeting that saw 300 plus attend
the meeting was talked about. People asked what was going to be
done with the lake. An action plan is being developed by the Town,
perhaps not fast enough for locals concerned with the state of
the lake, but as the council pointed out these sorts of problems
have been happening since the 1920's! Renaissance
Lac Brome Meeting
Environmental Committee
It was announced that Pierre Beaudoin and Francine Bastien have
been appointed to the Brome Lake Environmental Committee.
The
new Brome Lake Center opens December 18th
The Legion Community Center will be closed on December 14th and
15th for moving into the new Centre-Lac-Brome being completed
on Victoria Street. The Centre-Lac-Brome will be open as of Monday,
December 18th, 2006.
The grande opening party will be announced soon!
September & October Meetings
Mayor Wisdom presided over both meetings.
During question periods of both monthly gatherings citizens expressed
concern about the state of Lac Brome and persisted in understanding
the concrete steps and progressive actions the leaders were taking
to help Brome Lake which
was closed due to health concerns brought on by blue-green algae
blooms. During both meetings council members expressed their
desire to find solutions to the problem but admitted having difficulty
with the situation due to the fact that there were so many variables
and expert opinions to be considered that it was a situation that
required action but also further study. This caused some rumblings
among some observers at the meetings who were unimpressed with
the response by council.
At the September meeting it was reported that the Blue Recycling
bins had finally been received and were being distributed. It
will make recycling much easier to have a sturdy wheeled apparatus
to haul out to the curb on Recycling Day. The big Blue Bins are
quite nice emblazoned with the Lac Brome logo! A good step
by Lac Brome to encourage folks to recycle!
The Quebec Ministry of Transport had agreed to install a flashing
light at the intersection of McCurdy road and Highway 139.
The small cabin in the center of Knowlton beside the library which
has been used as the Knowlton tourist information center will
be transported to West Brome so it can serve the more useful purpose
of being a bus-shelter for school children awaiting the local
school bus. It would be great to see that old structure moved
out and some sort of improvement made to the space.
In September council announced their intentions to form
a committee with West Bolton to study what could be done to help
the cynobacteria problems in Brome Lake. During the October meeting
it was confirmed that Lac Brome would match the $2000 of other
municipalities towards the study. The announcement that up to
$6000 would be put towards the study of the Lac Brome problem
did not go over well with everyone attending the meeting. One
person presented a Ministry of the Environment letter that had
outlines concrete steps to help solve the ongoing problems associated
with Brome Lake and was vocal in his questions as to why many
of the initiatives mentioned in the document, dating from 2001,
had not been implemented.
At the October meeting held in Fulford it was made official that
after many years of complaints received by the municipality, Transport
Quebec agreed finally to install the flashing lights at Route
139 and Scott/McCurdy roads. Of course there would have to be
a slight catch: Lac Brome has to pay half the installation, $10,000
which will be in the 2007 budget, for the light that will be installed
in the spring of next year. Hasn't the the WalMart purchased in
Quebec Program allowed us to find flashing lights available for
less than $20,000?
The issue of Policing and weather the SQ or the Bromont Police
will be providing services to our region continues. Of course
the Security Minister, Jacques Dupuis will have to be overcome
as he seems unwilling to rewrite the policing laws. The cost of
Policing the Lac Brome area is based on our collective property
tax evaluations which were measured at $1.6 million last year
and will surely be rising. Many Canadian towns are undergoing
similar restructuring of their police protection and this will
surely be a long process for Knowlton.
At the October meeting Brome Lake announced that they had completed
spending $15,000 in court and legal fees to to win a case against
Depanneur Rouge for allowing transport trucks (the big rigs that
drive the Canadian economy) to park behind their store in the
large empty dusty lot. The Depanneur Rouge is Knowlton's favorite
gas station, ice-cream stand, lunch and breakfast restaurant and
has a popular corner store and Lotto-Quebec outlet. Most people
just assumed the trucks parked in the large expanse behind the
store were fairly harmless but apparently the town found a $15,000
expense to be a worthwhile allocation of resources and the Depanneur
must have spent a fair sum trying to win their case. Too bad both
sides couldn't work it out in the playground like back in the
day. Hopefully the Depanneur Rouge will still be allowed to allow
the dwarf-horse and buggy parades to stop for ice-cream in the
summer!
West Brome residents who have presented a petition containing
over 200 names who were requesting that the speed limit be
reduced on Highway 139 near the village of West Brome to 50 km/h.
While council generally seemed sympathetic the spokesman for the
group was frustrated by the lack of tangible results from council
and expressed his dismay during the October meeting in Fulford.
Speeding on roads is an issue that is especially frustrating for
residents in rural areas as most speeders who endanger the public
are either commercial vehicles or visitors from large centers
who maintain overly-aggressive driving habits. Many thoroughfares
in the Lac Brome area see traffic whizzing by at high speeds and
the petition brought forth by residents seems to be another example
of people's very safety being compromised due to heel-dragging
by those who make the final decisions regarding traffic modification
which is typically the Quebec Ministry of Transport. The recent
collapse of the viaduct in Laval underlines the fact that such
bureaucracies often react only after a tragedy occurs instead
of answering the warnings of citizens which are often like the
canary in the coal-mine.
The public meeting in September regarding the installation of
a cell phone communication tower in the Brome Lake area to provide
wireless service to the Eastern Township region was attended by
less than 10 residents. The proposed cellphone tower which the
mayor described as "small" will be a 240 foot tall structure
built near the Brome Lake Duck Farm. The first reports of the
impending structure were last month: Can
You Hear Me Now? Cell Tower To Be Built The next public discussions
on the issue will be held November 6th at 6 p.m. at the Legion
Community Center in Knowlton before the regular monthly council
meeting.
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Contact Knowlton (Lac Brome) City Hall
122, Lakeside, PO Box 60 Knowlton, QC J0E 1V0
Offices located on the corner of Lakeside and Victoria
Knowlton (Lac Brome) City Hall Hours: Monday to Friday 8:00 am
-12:00 noon and from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Telephone: 450-243-6111 Fax: 450-243-5300
Email: reception@villedelacbrome.com
Town of Brome
Lake Website
Mayor: Richard Wisdom
Director: Jean Bourret
Municipal Inspector: Marc Béland
Town of Lac Brome announced they now have the full Agenda of regular
council meetings online in .pdf and .doc format on their new website
available for download. While the printed version may miss some
of the drama of the meetings it still allows everyone to track
the progress of the officials monthly meetings. All
transcripts of the Lac Brome council meetings are available at
the new Town of Lac Brome Website.
The End of Regional Council Meetings
It was announced officially during the October Lac Brome Council
meeting in Fulford that the public meetings would soon be permanently
taking place in the new Knowlton Center which is set to have construction
completed by mid November 2006.
For years the monthly meetings were held in one of the small communities
that made up the conglomerate that is now known as Brome Lake.
The town was officially formed by the merger of the towns or hamlets
of Bondville, East Hill, Foster, Fulford, Iron Hill, Knowlton
and West Brome in 1971. Much like the different cities of the
Island of Montreal, there has been a fight to remain cohesive
while still preserving a sense of self amongst the area.
The announcement that all meetings will soon be held in Knowlton
will not go over well with everyone in the area but the Mayor
did make a good point during the meeting highlighting the fact
that Knowlton is a central area and the new community center will
be easier for many of our seniors to get too and while it is true
that it was nice for residents of areas like Fulford to have a
visit of the council in their town hall it is sure that the new
Knowlton Center will be a lively chambers for the public to take
part in area politics. The new modern building is something to
be proud of and the debate should be focussed on the issues and
not on the venue of the debate. We look forward to the grand opening
the date of which is yet to be announced.
Last
month at Knowlton City Hall
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