Angie Cathrae, states the legal budget for this year is just under $250,000.
Spending to date is just over $412,000 and the town’s legal counsel anticipates costs for the remainder of the year to be over $1.76-million-dollars, limited to existing known cases only.
83% of the variance is directly related to land claim costs that were to be budgeted in 2022.
Mayor Janice Jackson says the legal fees that were approved for this year, “did not include the First Nation’s land claim. It was not scheduled to go to trial until next year but it’s going to trial this November.”
Jackson says the second item that hit the town was the judicial review over the safety work on parking along Lakeshore Boulevard.
She says that was almost $200,000 in legal fees to defend the town against that charge.
However, Mayor Jackson says staff and council will figure out a way to make sure the overage doesn’t “harm taxpayers.”
She says “We’re not interested in having a big tax increase next year.”
The costs considering the town had to pay both sides of the legal fees, the jersey barricade rentals for two years plus all the staff hours used to make the “Sauble Facts” claims on the town website> the wasted hours by current Mayor Jackson and Bill jones as a delegation to the GSCA.
The 43 false statement or flat out lies by Jackson in that meeting with GSCA. Including the made up rendering where the wall was about 1 km away from the actual area where the wall was proposed. How many lies and how much wasted legal fees are we willing to accept?