“Chances are, there is nothing wrong,” said Mayor Williams in response. “But when I have many, many people contacting me saying that there is an issue, I’d be a fool not to look into it.”

Following the closed portion of the meeting, Council voted in favour of a motion to look into the bylaw. A committee will be created, consisting of five members of the public (including taxi drivers and owners), which will receive support from the Build- ing and By-law staff and police to review the Taxi By-Law 119-2004 to bring a report to Council. Included in this will be at least two open houses to gather public input. All members of Council were in favour of the motion, save for Councillor Wilson, who voted against it.

The By-Law department will also be fol- lowing up with specific complaints raised during the closed meeting.

A second hot issue arose during council after the receipt of correspondence from a number of residents of Newton Drive, who were present at Council to highlight their concerns that their street had not been scheduled to be redone this year.

The issue was that Highland Drive, which forms a crescent intersected by Newton, is in the process of being repaved, while their street, which has also not been repaved for over 40 years, is not scheduled for similar work. They argued that not only would it be more cost-efficient to the Town to do it at the same time, it also would have made more sense, especially since the street’s condition is worsening with the large trucks and other equipment driving down it to Highland.

After a lengthy discussion regarding the viability of adding Newton to the list of projects this year, Council decided to move forward with the project, which will cost an additional $100,000. The money will be taken from any surplus left by any departments this year, and if they cannot garner the total from that, will be taken from reserves.

All but Councillor Gail Campbell voted in favour of the project, as Councillor Campbell did not want to see reserves touched out of fear that Council would end up fac- ing a similar situation as last year at budget time.

“I am extremely sympathetic to the residents of Newton, but I’m not going to support this,” she said. “We went through agony during the budget process, and we fought hard to get what we have. We need to follow that list from Public Works, unless we are prepared to raise taxes more to do the roads.”

The motion as approved states that regardless of how the funds are taken, they will be viewed as a line-item that must be passed in the 2016 budget, ensuring that if reserves are touched, the money will go back in immediately.

In the meantime, repaving of Newton Drive is to be completed before the end of this year.