Sandra Armstrong, the mayor of Mansfield-et- Pontefract, says she will no longer oppose the payment of her municipality’s shares towards covering the $30,000 overpayments to Residence Meilleur after consulting with both her council and a lawyer.

At last month’s public meeting, the MRC voted to cover the $30,000 that was overpaid to Residence Meilleur in error instead of requiring the not-for-profit retirement home to repay the sum, which was . . .

required by a resolution passed by the previous MRC council in 2020.

Armstrong, who recently said she was going to try and avoid contributing the financial shares of Mansfield et Pontefract to the resolution because of disagreements over the legality and ethics of the matter, now says the matter would be too costly to pursue.

Armstrong said the municipality would contribute about 11 per cent to the repayment of the $30,000 that is covered by the MRC, which comes out to a contribution of $3,345. She said that the cost of pursuing the matter with a lawyer would just end up costing the municipality more in the end.

“If we get the lawyer to do it, it’s just going to cost us more,” said Armstrong. “It was more a matter of principle that, you know, I do not believe that what happened was okay. And my council is right behind me on that.”

Specifically, she believed that the vote contravened section 1492 of the Civil Code of Quebec, which states that payments made in error must be repaid.

“We do believe that the Residence Meilleur was a really good project,” said Armstrong. “But the problem was that the money was given an error, and it should have been paid back to the MRC.”

While Armstrong said she will not pursue the matter any further, if she did it would have tested the conventions governing the MRC.

For her part, Warden Jane Toller said that while she understood Sandra’s position, it was impossible for municipalities to not contribute their share.

“There is no way that one municipality can opt out,” said Toller. “Everybody is in it together. That is what makes the MRC. When a vote is taken, and the majority rules, everybody is governed by that decision, which means the municipality of Mansfield will have to pay their share.”

For context the shares are the contributions made each year to the MRC’s budget, according to Annie Vaillancourt, the MRC’s chief account. The proportion of shares each Municipality has to pay each year is calculated by each municipality’s valuation relative to the entire MRC. So the richer the municipality is valuation wise, the more shares they pay, according the Vaillancourt.

The Council of Mayors get to decide on the collective rate of the total valuation that goes to the MRC budget, but not on an individual municipality by municipality basis.

While Armstrong said she is done with the matter, she states she still remains concerned with the matter being dealt with at the Council of Mayors.

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