The Butler story found its way into the TJ this week in the form of a story by the court reporter on Wednesday and an editorial this morning.

While together, these paint a poor picture of the Town of Rothesay’s record on government transparency, the Butlers’ case is about more than transparency. It is about a town that seems to have a default position of, “it’s not our fault” when it comes to public complaints and that unwillingness to take responsibility for any problem is reinforced by a willingness to use the “so sue me” response when there is any pushback.

Town staff seem to have authority from council to engage limitless legal resources to fight on their behalf. ..and boy can they fight! The words of Justice Glennie are worth rereading on this point.

Meanwhile, the legal bills mount up for the town’s various fights including with property owners over a fence and a homeowner’s suing Rothesay over trees they cut down on his property. Then there was the car wash case and on and on…

The extent of Rothesay’s legal battles against taxpayers, property owners, householders, and business owners may never be fully revealed to the general public because the Town keeps its legal bills out of the sunlight. After losing in court the Mayor and Council haven’t been keen to put out press releases.

During the previous council term, Councillor Pat Gallagher Jette tried without much success to have staff produce the bills. It’s worth noting, however, that it took a Right to Information request to find out that Rothesay spent more than $140,000 responding to an appeal of the Rothesay Common development before the Provincial Planning Appeal Board a year ago. That case is still not resolved despite the Town’s eye-watering legal spending on a hearing in what is a relatively informal, public-friendly venue. (Meanwhile the operational budget for the Common has been overspent, without this legal bill, for 2016 with no money left for operations this fall. We’ll have more about that later.) But I digress…

The Butlers did eventually win their Battle over the release of the report. That is, at least the report the Town actually admitted it had withheld from Mr. Butler. This morning’s editorial suggested that releasing documents paid for by taxpayers was the proper decision. The editor’s underlying assumption, however, is that Mr. Butler got the all the documents he requested. There is some question about that as it happens.

Meanwhile, we shouldn’t get diverted from the fact that the Butler’s property is still soggy. The ditch that was dug by the Province of New Brunswick to dewater the property, and filled in by the Town, remains the cause of ongoing problems. That was the conclusion contained in the Town’s reluctantly released adjuster’s report.

Since his success in obtaining the Town’s report, Mr. Butler appeared before the new Council to ask that they resolve the problem. It has not been an easy ride and a solution is nowhere in sight.

After his presentation to council in July, he was punted to the Public Works Committee where he gave yet another presentation. The town’s Public Works Committee, Chaired by Deputy Mayor Matt Alexander, subsequently punted his case back to Council with a suggestion for another study/survey.

When Council then voted at September’s meeting to follow the recommendation from Public Works Committee do another survey  (I suspect that “Helpful” suggestion probably originated with staff) they were adding at least another month on top of the four months since this was before Justice Glennie. As well as adding more time, they added more cost to the problem with a motion that didn’t seem to contain any real commitment to finally do the right thing.

While the current council and Mayor can reasonably argue that this was not properly handled by the two previous councils, their ragging the puck on this month after month is beginning to make them part of the problem.