Services Mayor says municipality's hands are tied because streets in area are privately owned

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Tammy Scott-Wallace
Telegraph-Journal

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GRAND BAY-WESTFIELD - An outraged Paul Frampton says he is being treated like a second-class citizen even though he pays the same tax rate as the other residents in his town.

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Submitted photo

Water flows onto Paul Frampton’s property on Fern Avenue in Epworth Park. He and other area residents blame poor infrastructure.

"Our services have gone to the dogs. On the top of the hill you would think the residents pay their taxes and we don't," the Grand Bay-Westfield man said.

"It's a whole different world up there. Ditches are dug, roads paved and marked, roads are plowed clean and there are no flooding issues," he said of the busier Central Avenue. "Down here, we're the have-nots."

Frampton lives on Fern Avenue, off Central Avenue in Epworth Park. He said the infrastructure is so poor and the roads badly maintained that he and his neighbours experience extreme flooding several times a year.

The most recent flooding occurred in September, and in Frampton's yard water levels reached one metre. His baby barn, he said, has already sunk close to a metre in the saturated ground the past year.

Some of his neighbours have experienced the same thing, and those who have lived there a long time will say service has never been so bad.

Betty Hopey lives two houses away from Frampton and says about a dozen houses are situated on both Fern and the street next door, Smith's Lane. She believes residents of the other two streets below her, Young and Pine, are in a similar predicament with poor service.

"If the town just ran a ditch, it would solve so many problems," she said. "What the town gives as an excuse is that they don't own the roads. If they don't own them, why do they provide service to some and not others?

"It's getting worse all the time. The town will come, they look, and we never hear from them again."

While residents are not blaming the town for stormy weather, they do blame the municipality for not grading the dirt road or digging proper ditches or culverts to relieve the problems the residents are dealing with.

Frampton explained the cracked roadway is angled in a way that any runoff coming from properties on the hill above him dumps onto his property, and that of his neighbours.

"It has been absolutely ridiculous," he said. "I even put a lighthouse on my front lawn for a joke.

"This is a residential area but Fern Avenue and Smith's Lane look like a war zone. I have seen goat paths look better."

Mayor Grace Losier confirmed the town has no ownership over Epworth Park streets and therefore its hands are tied.

"Those are private streets," she said. "There's all kinds of streets that existed before the town was incorporated that don't belong to us."

She said to be courteous the town does provide minimal service to the area that is actually owned by the Epworth Park residents themselves.

"We plow, we do general maintenance, we try to do what we can, but we can't put taxpayers' dollars into capital projects for areas we don't own, and that's what that area requires," Losier explained. "It's just a terrible circumstance, I feel terrible."

Losier would like property owners to sign ownership of the streets over to the town so they can receive the same services as other areas, but to date they have been unwilling. Specifically, she said, in recent history the town tried negotiating with Young Street residents who own land along the waterfront, but they didn't want to co-operate.

"The people bought property on private streets. There's little we can do."

Frampton doesn't buy it. "The town has been providing services here for years," he said. "Why now is it getting so bad? I think they are bullying us into handing it over."

Frampton says while the roadways that access his home are private, he still pays the same taxes as everyone else who receives luxuries like plowing and paving from the town.

He said if the town doesn't want to help their taxpayers, who also foot the bill for town employees who do the work, then they should be reimbursed or given a discount for the services they are expected to take care of themselves.

As for the town's taking ownership of the part of the road that is his private land, Frampton is willing to talk.

"They haven't even broached the subject with us or the Epworth Park committee as far as I know," he said. "They haven't asked to meet with us. In fact, they won't even answer the letters I send them. If the town wants to talk to us about taking over our property rights, it would be nice to hear what they are proposing.

"It's at least worth talking about, I think."

But he questions how his elected council can neglect residents in turmoil, claiming no responsibility for that area of town, yet they are the very people who approve building permits in his "private" community.

"None of it makes sense," he said.

Shortly after Frampton bought his home eight years ago, he and his sons dug a ditch by hand along Central Avenue. They even hauled rock from the highway to line it for drainage.

"We're talking no small feat in engineering," Frampton said. "I'm doing anything I can to save my house, but I've had enough."

He estimates he has spent $20,000 on renovations in the eight years since he bought his home and he wants to protect that investment.

And with winter coming, he is dreading passage on his small street. He said service is so inadequate in the snowy months that the occasional snow removal, consisting of a "single swipe" of a quarter-tonne truck with a two-metre blade, is a joke.

"There is no salt, no sand for us. We either get flooded or snowed in," the Saint John car salesman said. "Why do I have to keep repairing damage and paying for services I never get?

"I'm trying to Band-Aid it the best I can with quick fixes, but we need some equipment in here digging a ditch and laying some pipe to handle some of the runoff. Our properties are being washed away and the town knows it."