Shep at the centre of Code of Conduct storm
The Town of Tantramar is refusing to release a $19,000 investigator’s report outlining the reasons why Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell allegedly violated seven sections of Council’s Code of Conduct.
Wiggins-Colwell, the former mayor of Dorchester represents ward one, which includes the former village in the newly amalgamated municipality of Tantramar.
No details of the seven violations were disclosed in a disciplinary motion passed by Wiggins-Colwell’s council colleagues on November 14th — only vague references to sections of the Code that mention “respecting the decision-making process,” “adherence to policies, procedures and bylaws” and “improper use of influence.”
A Warktimes investigation has confirmed that the violations relate to the restoration of the Shep sandpiper statue in Dorchester’s village square last April and to a lesser extent, the disposal of surplus tables from the Veterans Community Centre in February.
Wiggins-Colwell says she was given an opportunity to read the investigator’s report compiled by Montana Consulting of Moncton, but was not allowed to keep a copy and instead, was given a bare-bones summary to prepare her defence which council heard behind closed doors.
“If the mayor and CAO had listened to what I was trying to explain to them, this whole thing could have been resolved without the need for an investigation that ended up costing more than the new Shep,” Wiggins-Colwell says.
“I promised when I was running for my seat on the new council to do my best to get Shep back in time for the Sandpiper Festival and that’s what I was trying to do,” she adds.
Info requests denied
When Wiggins-Colwell filed a formal request for a copy of the Montana investigator’s report under New Brunswick’s Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (RTIPPA), the town turned her down on the grounds that the results of a personnel investigation must remain confidential.
Bill Steele outside his jail in Dorchester
Warktimes received the same response as did Dorchester businessman Bill Steele who filed the original Code of Conduct complaint alleging that Wiggins-Colwell had no authority to arrange for the creation and installation of a new Shep statue when the project had not been approved by Tantramar council.
Now, Steele, who operates the Dorchester Jail Bed & Breakfast a stone’s throw away from the statue, says he should have the right to read the investigator’s report.
“They gave her a slap on the wrist and I’d like to know why,” he says referring to council’s requirement that Wiggins-Colwell attend training sessions “to better understand her roles and responsibilities as an elected official.”
“The town loves Debbie and the town loves Shep,” Steele acknowledges.
“I’m just that guy from Toronto causing shit again, but it’s in my blood, I’ve got to speak up about things. This wasn’t right.”
Shep’s twisted story
Before municipal amalgamation, the Village of Dorchester paid about $15,000 for the installation of a new viewing platform for Shep and stairs leading up to it, but had not allocated all of the money needed to replace the wooden statue that had rotted so badly it had to be removed.
The Village Council requested that $60,000 be set aside in Tantramar’s first budget for a new, more durable Shep, but the province did not include it.
Kara Becker addressing Tantramar council on March 14th
On March 14, Kara Becker, a former deputy mayor of Dorchester, appeared before Tantramar council asking it to collaborate with citizens so that the statue could be restored in time for this year’s Sandpiper Festival and the return of the migrating shorebirds to the Bay of Fundy in August.
Although Mayor Andrew Black said he understood the importance of the statue and the desire to get it back, Becker complained later that there was no follow-up from the town and when she e-mailed to ask about citizens donating to the project, she received this response from CAO Jennifer Borne:
At this time Tantramar is not able to accept financial donations or any donation that requires a tax-receipt post-reform as a result of the formation of a new entity. In addition to this, Tantramar Council has not accepted this particular project.
Meantime, Monty MacMillan, the artist who created the original Shep, said that although he couldn’t do the replacement work himself, he knew an artist who could.
“So, I got a call from Debbie,” says painter and sculptor Robin Hanson during an interview with Warktimes at his workshop, art gallery and historical theme park in French Lake, near Oromocto.
“She asked me, ‘Do you think you could help out in any way?'” Hanson says.
“I was interested because it was a community project and she had taken the time to discuss it with her community.”
Hanson says Wiggins-Colwell visited him twice at his gallery and brought with her the metal beak, legs and feet from the original Shep.
“I couldn’t use the beak,” Hanson says, “but I could use the legs and feet if they were modified to make them look more realistic.”
Robin Hanson poses in his workshop with Shep last March
After Hanson had created the new fibreglass Shep, which stands nearly eight feet high and weighs nearly 300 pounds, he says the story went viral in the national media and that’s when he received a phone call from Mayor Black who told him to remove the photo from his website and return the steel legs and feet.
“I wanted to stay clear of controversy, so I took the photo down,” Hanson says.
“I told him, ‘You can have them back (the legs and feet) when the sculpture is finished, when I’ve made them look better,'” he adds with a smile.
Hanson says a Moncton-based organization called Fundy Biosphere Region* paid the full $9,300 cost of the statue.
” I certainly didn’t make any money on it, but I thought, as a New Brunswicker, the migrating shorebirds is an incredible story and I wanted to help the community,” he says.
He also created two small paintings of Shep and granted Tantramar the right to use them freely for promotional purposes.
Turning the tables
Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell
“The Montana investigator said I did not commission the new fibreglass Shep and I did not violate the Code of Conduct when I spoke with Robin Hanson,” Wiggins-Colwell says.
“I approached things the way we always did in Dorchester. I was afraid Shep’s feet and beak were going to the dump, so I salvaged them in hopes of reducing the cost of a new statue,” she adds.
“When the whole thing blew up into national news, we had groups coming forward offering to pay for the statue and that’s what happened. Thanks to my efforts, the new Town of Tantramar did not pay one cent for it.”
Wiggins-Colwell says she’s especially concerned about damage to her reputation, both from the allegations concerning the Shep statue and ones about the distribution of surplus tables from the Veterans Community Centre.
“To me, it feels like I was used as a scapegoat because people in Dorchester were very upset over how this whole thing was handled,” she says referring to concerns about rumours last February that the VCC kitchen might be torn out to make way for Bob Edgett’s Memorial Boxing Club.
There were also local concerns about the disposal of chairs in a dumpster behind the VCC.
On February 22, the town convened a meeting with the volunteer groups who use the Centre, to reassure them that the VCC kitchen would remain and the surplus furniture, including heavy tables, would not be consigned to a dumpster.
Wiggins-Colwell went to that meeting.
“The investigator said the only thing I did wrong was that I attended a meeting (uninvited) with the volunteers at the Veterans Centre,” she says.
“I went to that meeting because it’s my duty as councillor to represent my community. That’s what I was elected to do. I don’t understand why I wasn’t invited,” she says, adding that she herself has served as a volunteer for the Greater Dorchester Moving Forward Co-op.
After the meeting, Wiggins-Colwell called long-time Dorchester resident, Macx MacNichol who says he showed up at the VCC before 9:00 the next morning.
Macx MacNichol selling cheese at the Sackville Farmers Market to support hungry students
“Two guys already in there handed the tables out to me,” he says. “There were 11, but two had to be scrapped.”
MacNichol, who is in the recycling business, says he also collected 24 chairs from the dumpster.
“They went like hot cakes,” he says. “They brought in $440 for the Dorchester Food Bank and $440 for the food bank in Sackville.”
He says that by the time the town put out a memo saying anyone could get a table for free, they were already gone.
“Then they accused me of stealing the tables, and then they went after Debbie. I guess they had to ding somebody for it,” MacNichol says.
Wiggins-Colwell says the Montana investigator found that there were no Code of Conduct violations with how MacNichol collected the tables from the VCC.
“The violations that were cited against me were not supported by the investigator’s findings,” she says.
“I don’t feel that I’m a thief or a liar and I’m disappointed that it was put across to the public that way.”
*NOTE: The website for the United Nations designated Fundy Biosphere Region describes it as a non-profit organization and a community-based initiative “comprised of individuals and representatives of various stakeholder groups, organizations and local communities working to promote the sustainable development of the region by enhancing the research and innovation capacity and by creating a forum for various groups to share information, knowledge and best practices.” No one from the organization has responded to e-mail or phone messages from Warktimes.
From the meagre threads of factual information on the Wiggins-Colwell pillory, it appears that the town of Tantramar has successfully created its own version of the Morality Police. Not only was she charged with an unspecified number of misdemeanors for breaching the Council’s Code of conduct, but inexplicably made subject to a commissioned $19,000 investigation by a work environment corporation! As if the Councilors were unable to puzzle through the charges that they would have to justify themselves.
The injustice of the procedure followed is beyond belief. The accused is allowed to read once the report made by the corporate ( not legal) “experts”. The accused is then presented with a brief summary of the “charges” to face a closed session of Council which presumably had had ample opportunity to read and reread the document listing the charges. In legal terms, that might be called failure to disclose evidence. In fact, the whole event seems to have taken on the appearance of an extra-judicial trial. The final coup is the refusal by Council to release the report to the accused under the Right to Information act on the grounds that a personnel investigation must remain confidential! But the very subject of the investigation is the accused, in person!
As a citizen of Tantramar, I am embarrassed by the lack of basic honesty in the handling of what was in reality a very minor matter.
Andrew Black must be threatened by Ms. Debbie who gets things done.
Thanks for the report Bruce.
I had wanted to speak with Debbie by phone about this sh*tshow because I think allowing people to behave badly will have consequences in the years to come.
The Black Crew must not be allowed to intimidate others in this way.. and it’s best that Andrew checks himself before he wrecks himself as they say.
Intimidating the artist and telling him to remove a photo from the website? wow.. really?
I have to say that as a Taxpayer in Tantramar and a former resident, I like Peter am embarrassed by the lack of basic honesty in the handling of what was in reality a very minor matter.
These things happen too often by these councilors (and surprisingly the past councilors too, as far as I remember). They don’t have any good productivity and all you hear from them is these kinds of stories. Lack of productivity, lack of respect for each other, lack of respect for citizens, wasting taxpayers’ money over useless investigations, favoritism towards a developer,…
Bikeshedding, again.
https://whatsthepont.blog/2011/11/06/bikeshedding-prospering-in-your-committees-parkinsons-law-of-triviality/
I find it hard to accept corruption in Municipal politics. Everyone on the council read the report and voted in favour of the 7 counts she was found to have violated. If you read the report, most of you would be appalled by the conduct. Transparency and full accountability to the public is required when elected. No more secrets no more favoritism in our community. I am happy to have a new local government that believes in truth, accountability, and transparency with our money. If you can’t trust a councillor to tell the truth, who can you trust?
You’ve read the report? And no one else can get it!
I understand you did not review the report…nor has anyone else except for Council.
“If you read the report, most of you would be appalled by the conduct. Transparency and full accountability to the public is required when elected.”
Since you haven’t read the report, and neither has any member of the public, it’s hard to see how you could say how we’d react to it.
The council’s total lack of transparency is the reason nobody has seen the report. And the council’s total lack of common sense is why it spent $19,000 of our money slapping a councillor on the wrist in secret over a fibreglass bird that cost the town nothing, as well as over such shocking breaches as going to a meeting without explicitly being invited. The only appalling conduct is the way the town handled this.
There is nothing about this controversy that suggests “corruption” was involved.
Reviewing the actions of our Town Council over the last 3 years, it is disturbing to see how inconsistently it has dealt with alleged Code of Conduct By-law violations:
May 2020 – Councillor Phinney was reprimanded for violating the Code of Conduct for disclosing confidential, personnel related information during a Town Council meeting. This reprimand related to Councillor Phinney opposing the appointment of Mr. Burke as the new CAO, stating that in his opinion there were better qualified candidates in the competition for the CAO position. Councillor Phinney received an official letter of reprimand from Town Council and was instructed to acknowledge publicly that he breached the Code of Conduct and sign a statement affirming that he will abide by its provisions.
July 2022 – Councillor Phinney was again reprimanded for violating the Code of Conduct By-law. An independent investigator was hired by the town and paid $10,000 to investigate two complaints against Councillor Phinney. One complaint related to Councillor Phinney stating that in his opinion the town hiring practices were unfair and suggested there had been a potential conflict of interest. The second complaint related to him stating his opinion that Mt A students should vote in their home ridings during provincial elections rather than in the Tantramar riding since they are temporary residents of Tantramar. At the advice of the independent investigator, Councillor Phinney lost two months’ pay (including medical benefits) and the right to travel on behalf of the town.
July 2022 – Sackville Mayor Mesheau, Councillor Black, and several other Town Councillors publicly discussed the relative merits of the two candidates for the CAO position at Town Council meetings, violating the Code of Conduct By-law and the Procedural By-law. Our Town Council has repeatedly stated that any personnel related issues have to be kept private due to confidentiality and privacy issues. No complaint was lodged over these violations of the two by-laws and neither the Mayor nor Councillors were reprimanded for their violations.
Jan 2023 – Mayor Black knowingly violated the Procedural By-law, the Code of Conduct By-law, and possibly the Provincial Local Governance Act when he voted against the wishes of the remainder of Town Council to elect the Deputy Mayor at the first council meeting as required by the Procedural By-law. A formal complaint was lodged against Mayor Black for these violations. After a period of two months, Town Council somehow determined that he had not in fact violated the By-laws, even though the evidence can be seen on the video record of that meeting.
Dec 2023 – Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell was reprimanded for violations of the Code of Conduct By-law after the Town paid Montana Consulting $19,000 to perform a private investigation of complaints made against her. As Bruce reported, one complaint related to her taking the initiative to finish the restoration of the Sandpiper statue (at no cost to the Municipality of Tantramar), that had begun before the municipal amalgamation process. As a result of the investigation, Councillor Wiggins-Colwell was instructed by Town Council to attend a training session relating to the functions of elected officials. The fact that Councillor Wiggins-Colwell was denied a copy of the Montana report because the Town stated that the results of a personnel investigation must remain confidential must be especially galling to her considering she was the subject of the report.
Local politics now pays $2000 per month for a Town Councillor.. hazard pay.. but you would not be able to find enough money to pay me to work in that capacity — Its a gongshow.