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Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s deputy mayor says communication has been lacking over a deal to sell a piece of commercial land in Sydney harbour, and that problem “starts at the top.”
Last week, CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke said he did not tell council about the land sale because staff were expected to provide the information.
Deputy Mayor Glenn Paruch said that answer is not good enough.
“To say staff is responsible for relaying all of the information, I just kind of feel is passing the buck,” he said in an interview after a private meeting with the mayor last week.
Clarke was not available for comment Monday.
Councillors have been upset with the land sale, calling it a closed-door deal and a lease-to-own scheme that did not benefit CBRM.
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They were also concerned that the man who helped put the deal together in 2015 is the only one benefiting 11 years later.
CBRM bought the industrial wharf property in Sydport industrial park for $1.2 million in 2015 in order to lease it to Point Edward Marine, a company owned by the Ontario firm McKeil Marine.
According to CBRM staff at the time, Albert Barbusci’s company helped craft a deal under which the municipality would forgo property taxes in exchange for what was expected to be $18 million in investment and millions more in local spending, plus the creation of more than 100 jobs.
Some councillors now say those benefits did not materialize.
Barbusci has not responded to requests for comment.
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Barbusci, whose bid to market a container terminal on nearby CBRM land was not renewed earlier this year, bought Point Edward Marine in 2022 and exercised the company’s option to buy the Sydport wharf property from CBRM.
The lease was for $90,000 a year for 10 years, with an option to buy at CBRM’s original purchase price of $1.2 million, less $60,000 a year for making lease payments.
CBRM staff say Point Edward Marine bought the property from the municipality last month for $564,600.
Nova Scotia’s Property Online website says the property’s assessment value for taxation is nearly $735,000 this year. According to provincial property data, it was assessed at just under $552,000 in 2022, when Barbusci became the owner.
At this year’s commercial tax rate, the property would generate approximately $30,000 a year in taxes for CBRM.
Erika Shea, CEO of non-profit development agency New Dawn Enterprises in Sydney, said the lease-to-own deal has enriched Barbusci, but not CBRM.
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Paruch said councillors would not have been as upset over the sale if they had been told about it when the mayor signed the deal March 24, while council was still deliberating over this year’s budget.
“This could have been avoided with a simple conversation that could have been had either with myself, or with myself and council as a whole, to work through this so that we didn’t have to go through what we did,” he said.
Paruch said he met with the mayor last week to express his frustration over a lack of communication from the mayor to council.
He said the two had a “good talk,” but the mayor did not make any promises, despite the deputy mayor’s long-standing request to be kept in the loop on municipal issues.
‘It starts at the top’
“We do have goals that we’ve talked about to work together, so now we have to get aligned and get back at it,” said Paruch.
“I guess the proof will be in the pudding here in the next short while if that happens and any councillor will be able to answer that if they’re getting the communication that they want. But it starts at the top and works its way down.”
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