Municipal officials in Richmond Co. say they’re staying with the Eastern District Planning Commission.
Warden Brian Marchand says staff members investigated doing the work themselves, but didn’t find any potential savings.
After October’s regular municipal council meeting Monday night, Marchand said it would cost more to do things in-house.
“Staff had analyzed starting a planning department, and we looked at the costs, and the costs were a bit too high,” he said. “So we decided to stay within the EDPC.”
Marchand said they only decided to investigate starting their own department to reduce costs.
He said their choice was easy once the staff report indicated it would cost more to do the work themselves.
“With our budget shortfalls, a lot of the decisions that have been made in the last year or two have been because of that- we need to decide what needs to get cut,” he said. “We’re going to be short again by $300,000 or $400,000 in lost tax revenue, so we need to find some way of moving forward.”
Marchand said they previously gave notice to leave the Cape Breton Regional Enterprise Network as part of that effort to cut costs.
