In an announcement on May 7 at the Municipality of the County of Richmond’s administrative building in Arichat, Richmond MLA Trevor Boudreau confirmed accessibility upgrades and a new sidewalk in Arichat.

The administration building is also one of the three facilities that will have accessibility improvements, the province said, noting that the others are the Petit de Grat public library and the scale house at the waste management transfer station in West Arichat.

That afternoon, Boudreau announced at the St. John’s Centre for the Arts in Arichat that community facilities and trails would be enhanced with provincial grants.

Among those receiving funding are St. Joseph’s Parish in Petit de Grat; the St. Peter’s Grand River-Loch Lomond Pastoral Charge; the Rocky Bay Irish Club; the Friends of St. John's Arichat Society; the South Mountain Arm of Gold Community Association; and the East Richmond ATV Riders Association.

The RCMP is still dealing with mental health calls, drug activity, and more traffic offences in Port Hawkesbury.

Staff Sargeant David Morin provided an update during the regular monthly meeting of Port Hawkesbury Town Council on May 7.

Of the top 25 offences, Morin said he doesn’t see any big changes between 2022 and 2023 in an area covering the town and southern Inverness County, and added that mental health and well-being calls continue to take up a lot of time because officers have to wait in hospitals for people to been seen by a doctor.

Although there are problems, Town Councillor Jason Aucoin said the RCMP has been very responsive when they've been contacted with reports but said there are “a lot more needles being found around the town.”

Morin said one person was sentenced to federal jail time in the fall and another person from the town is coming to trial soon, both for drug-related crimes.

Another number that Morin pointed to was traffic-related calls which went up from 17 in 2022 to 40 in 2023, saying that nine people were caught driving over the posted limit, with four of those taking place in Reeves Street. Overall, there were 22 warnings issued in Port Hawkesbury, with 21 of those detected on Reeves Street, Morin told the council.

As for collisions, Morin said there were 18 collisions and of those, 10 took place on Reeves Street, noting problem areas like the corner of Reeves and Reynolds Streets, as well as the intersection of Reeves and Pitt Streets. When looking at the statistics, Morin reported there were 27 parking lot collisions in Port Hawkesbury over the past year.

Voters in Port Hawkesbury will not use paper ballots to elect their next mayor and town council. During the regular monthly meeting on May 7, Port Hawkesbury Town Council approved a recommendation from the committee of the whole to use an electronic and phone voting system in the municipal election in October.

The town wants to set up a meeting with Department of Public Works officials about changes to Reeves Street.

At the regular monthly meeting of Port Hawkesbury Town Council on May 7, Town Councillor Jason Aucoin asked about the status of any meetings with the Department of Public Works about the Destination Reeves Street Project.

CAO Terry Doyle said council has been provided with a staff document that discusses “key design pieces.”

The CAO said he also reached out to the lead engineer and the design manager within the traffic section of public works and invited them to attend the next committee-of-the-whole meeting on May 21, but he had not received a response.