As New Brunswick’s property assessment scandal continues to unravel, the Rothesay man behind the property tax assessment data website propertize.ca believes right now what we need is to hear more from the people inside Service New Brunswick.
“The people that have been speaking out I think are quite brave for doing so,” says Shawn Peterson.
“It’s been very clear everyone knew what was going on and that goes right from the bottom to to the top and we need more people reaching out to media, and being allowed to talk through this.”
It was because of whistleblowing from within SNB the revelations, that officials invented renovations for more than 2000 homes because they didn’t have time to have professional assessors check if those houses had actually been renovated or not, first came to light publicly — and it’s been now reported more than 100,000 properties were assessed using new aerial technology which has raised serious questions.
100,000 assessments done using pictometry and the examples are shocking. Something is very wrong. How did these bills ever go out? #nbpoli pic.twitter.com/nV3YWGXSyS
— Shawn Peterson (@RothesayShawn) April 5, 2017
Peterson says that number is huge:
“And the bigger problem is that this 100,000 wasn’t spread out across the entire province. This 100,000 was really focused in the urban areas, specifically in Saint John, Moncton, Fredericton and the nearby towns.”
The Opposition has asked that New Brunswickers who have been impacted by this controversy to get in touch with them and have provided two email addresses, Blaine Higgs’ mailing address and a Dropbox link.
“[PC leader Blaine] Higgs says the email addresses will serve property owners and that the use of a drop-box is even more secure and will assist civil servants whose livelihoods have been threatened by the Premier in recent interviews and who have information to share,” a press release from the Opposition’s office reads.
The Gallant government has pledged to address the property tax assessment issue:
There is clearly a problem with property assessments and, as your government; we are going to fix it. https://t.co/Vws56RwyiR
— Brian Gallant (@BrianGallantNB) April 3, 2017
