Councillors in the Town of Port Hawkesbury are supporting a structure change to the Eastern Strait Regional Enterprise Network.
Brenda Chisholm-Beaton, the town’s mayor, says their members of the LOC board and the ESREN board would combine to create a more efficient process.
She says there’s a financial shortfall from previous years, so they’ll have to negotiate with provincial counterparts to have that money transferred to their REN entity; they’re also looking at a three year funding agreement with provincial and municipal officials.
After Thursday’s special council meeting, Chisholm-Beaton told The Hawk they realize they’re going off the board compared to other RENs in the province.
“We feel like this is the right direction to go in,” she said. “We are quite hopeful and optimistic that the province will see that we need to have our tailor-made REN that will work well for us.”
Chisholm-Beaton said they’ll wait for officials with the other five municipalities within the REN to also approve the plan before taking it to the provincial level.