The New Brunswick Union has fired back at blame that’s been directed towards the assessors over the property tax assessment fiasco.
A statement from NBU president Susie Proulx-Daigle reads that the blame for this problem doesn’t sit with the assessors, it rests with elected officials.
In an interview with Acadia Broadcasting, she tells us for her it was all very worrisome.
“The fact that you have an official that’s blaming public service workers, the people who work for the province and do as they’re told,” says Proulx-Daigle. “They don’t make the rules, they follow them.”
Assessors foresaw that there were going to be mistakes, says Proulx-Daigle, and many of their assessors had gone to their managers to voice concerns about fast-tracking the system which was supposed to take up to three years to implement so that all of the wrinkles could be ironed out.
“Last fall the assessors were calling and telling us that it looks like they’re gonna fast-track the system, they weren’t ready,” she says. “On our end, we represent the workers there we don’t make the rules, so we just told our workers you have to do what you’re told…and we’ll have to deal with that when that time comes if it comes and we see the result now.”
She tell us they’ll be fighting for their members and that there’s no way they should suffer the consequences of this mess.
“I keep hearing that they’re looking for who made the leak and I think that focus has to stop. It’s not about who leaked the information,” says Proulx-Daigle.
I think they should be focusing on who wanted to fast track it, why it had to be done within a year. Were there incentives? What’s the cause? Why was there such a rush to implement the system? Who benefited from this? It’s not the taxpayers of this province.”
Service New Brunswick tells me they’ve received 12,000 property tax assessment appeals as of noon today. There were about 7100 last year.
— Laura Lyall (@LauraLyall) April 7, 2017