Saint John Regional Cooperation – Real Change or Just Talking Points?

This morning’s post is based on a letter to the editor published in this morning’s Telegraph Journal.


During the recent municipal election campaign, proponents of the field house project at Exhibition Park held a briefing session for candidates . While it was generally well supported, only two Rothesay candidates attended, Tiffany MacKay French and Nathan Davis.

Only time will tell if Tiffany can bring her fellow Rothesay Council members around to the idea that big ticket recreational facilities like the field house should be shared regionally if they are going to be affordable in the ongoing limited growth environment of the greater Saint John Area.

One thing is clear. We need to stop using our property tax base to poach activity away from our neighbours. A great place to start is with sharing of regional facilities like the field house, arenas, and any other facility that requires a wider population base for viability. The Valley already has more ice sheets per capita than anywhere else in the province and that’s simply unsustainable when more than half our population are seniors.


The election of three new mayors and a return of two others in the Saint John metropolitan area creates a rare opportunity to start the next four years off with a clean slate.

The mayors-elect have already been talking about cooperation, a great first step. By now they should realise that the Saint John area shares the same economic pie and that pie has grown very little in the last thirty years. The unfortunate trend is that situation isn’t expected to change in the next twentyfive. Our leaders must learn to govern in what has become an economic steady-state.

The first step in a low growth environment is to spend according to the resources we have, avoiding the trap of seeing affordability through the rose coloured glass of overly optimistic growth projections or with the false assumption that taxpayers have lots of spare cash to accommodate the folly of over-built infrastructure. 

For those who base their case for spending on the “build it they will come” arguement; that is a fallacy, pure and simple.  In fact over building may actually slow what little growth there might be as investors recoil from the misallocation of resources and the prospect of higher taxes.

Too frequently, the economic rationale is window dressing, cover for parochial empire building. Let’s hope the Mayors can end the corrosive competition that has put municipal bragging rights above common sense. This competition among municipalities has resulted in wasted resources and difficulty in attracting support from other levels of government for more legitimate needs.

If every town from Sussex to St. Stephen, went after a major regional venue like the Field-House at Exhibition Park, then none would be built. Rothesay is a good case in point.

Rothesay spent more than three quarters of a million dollars on the failed twin rinks project; a similar amount designing a field house that would have cost more that $28 million and would have had an operating loss of nearly a million dollars a year; and now the new Rothesay Arena at $15 million that comes with the added cost of upkeep for the existing building plus the new one. Had Rothesay not pursued these boondoggles, the money wasted already on engineering and designs could have paid for the needed renovations of the existing arena without having had to borrow a nickel!

If we are going to grow, then the only sustainable growth will come from the synergy of bedroom communities and Saint John, working together, not grabbing for the last piece of cold pie.

The first test of the new mayors is the Exhibition Park Field House. It can and should be a regional asset. It will draw local, regional, and national events, while still being available to support a wide range of sport and fitness activity for residents from Grand Bay-Westfield to Hampton. A collection of under-utilized smaller facilities will simply be a drain on taxpayers.

Spreading the operating costs of facilities like the field house, across the wider population is the only viable option in our economic circumstances. We should do the same for arenas.

Communities that have learned to manage spending in a steady-state economy are best positioned with strong fundamentals to react to growth if and when it happens.

If the mayors can control their own spending and find synergies that lower the cost of doing business across the region, then the right message will filter out to the job creators with money to invest.

The best way to grow this area’s economic pie is organically by attracting new business into the area, not by stealing it from our neighbours.