Town of Rosemère holds August council meeting
Seen here with councillors during a recent Rosemère town council meeting, Mayor Eric Westram listens to and answers residents’ questions.
Martin C. Barry

Rosemère mayor Eric Westram announced during the Aug. 19 meeting of town council that the council decided to underscore the performance of certain municipal employees whose services proved to be exceptionally valuable over the past summer.

The three received student bursaries of $500 each. “These employees demonstrated exceptional behaviour and professionalism throughout the season and I would like to congratulate them for their excellent work while wishing them success in their studies,” said the mayor.

 

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Summer workers thanked

At the same time, he said he wanted to thank all the town’s seasonal workers, who worked incessantly whether at the day camps, at the pool, as bicycle monitors or at any of the town’s recreational facilities.

During the regular business portion of the meeting, Mayor Westram read out a resolution calling upon the provincial government to exclude certain areas of Rosemère from the government’s overall plan to create a new flood risk zone in the town. A number of town residents had objected to the province’s new flood zone map.

Question over flood dikes

During the second question period, Philippe Sauvé of Bellerive St. questioned the mayor on item 11.1 from the council agenda, involving a study on the protection of urban heritage sites on the banks of Rivière des Mille Îles (a request to receive financial assistance from the province).

“Are we talking here about the solidification or reinforcement of the dikes? Or does this have anything to do with all that?” he asked. Mayor Westram said the resolution had nothing to do with the flood dikes. He said further developments regarding studies of the feasibility of the town’s current dikes along the Rivière des Mille Îles would be available in September.

Climate change subsidies

Town councillor Marie-Hélène Fortin explained that the resolution in question concerned an offer of subsidies by Quebec to combat climate change, for which Rosemère might be eligible.

Normand Painchaud of Elm St. asked for an update on the Val-Marie residential construction project, “because there is currently nothing going on with that,” he said. “Is it a project that has fallen into the water? Does the heritage building there fall under the ministerial or municipal protections?”

Val-Marie project update

Westram replied, “We have no news from the developer. In fact, the request for a building permit has never even been deposited. So effectively we are waiting to see what will be happening with that developer.” Painchaud interjected, “He is still alive?”

The mayor continued, “One portion, one of the buildings, would fall within the flood zone. That is the building which is closest to the water – the building which formerly was occupied by an overseer who made sure that the security on that property was respected.” Councillor Fortin added that the heritage house on the site is conserved as heritage site. “That’s a certainty,” she said.

Some water damage

Answering another resident in the audience who interjected with a comment, Westram continued, “At the house itself, and I have visited it personally, there has never been any water that has penetrated it. On the other hand, the other to which I referred in the flood zone which was the overseer’s and the one that was the nuns’, there water did get in at some point because the floors are all wavy.”

Regarding the Val-Marie project, the mayor said “I am even ready to call the architect who had the mandate to build, because I would also like to know what is going on. Because that project was intended for persons of a certain age.

No word from developer

“There were people there in villas who wanted to sell and go live there,” said Westram. “The rest were firsts to whom this project was proposed. There were three phases: the first was the people from the villas, the second people from Rosemère and the third and last was units left available to the general public.”

In the meantime, according to Mayor Westram, some people living in the villas have been leaving to go live in places such as Blainville “because they have no place in Rosemère to settle. That project was something that would have filled a need and it was a nice project.”