Group fights to keep court in Sussex
SUSSEX - With the municipal election over, an ad hoc committee devoted to keeping the Sussex courthouse open will formalize its strategy in preparation for a meeting next month with Justice Minister TJ Burke.
"We're going to meet with him to pitch our case to keep it open," said Sussex Mayor Ralph Carr, who heads the committee.
The minister has agreed to meet with the committee at the end of June but hasn't agreed on a specific date. The meeting comes about a year after the June 15 date the minister originally planned to close the court.
"Centralization is a detriment to growth. We've said that all along," said Carr.
He plans to consult community groups who deal with people in crisis, such as extra-mural nurses, Sussex Vale Transition House and various support groups, about how the closure would affect them.
Sussex council had asked the RCMP earlier to include statistics on how much time officers spend in court in the monthly police reports to council.
The mayors of Norton and Sussex Corner will be involved in the discussion and Sussex lawyers Emily Palmer and Gary Fulton will weigh in with their dual legal and municipal knowledge. Palmer is a former Sussex mayor and Fulton has been a Sussex councillor.
When Burke first announced last May that he'd close the Sussex court and six other satellite courts around the province in June, Palmer launched a lawsuit. A lawyer with mobility challenges from multiple sclerosis, she argued the closure would remove the only accessible courthouse in the county.
She dropped the suit when Burke later decided to reconsider his decision. He announced last summer that once a new court complex in Saint John is open, the Sussex and Hampton courthouses would close.
The $47 million justice complex will be built on the former Saint John YMCA property. The 13-courtroom facility is slated for completion in 2010.
Hampton council is resigned to the minister's decision and is looking at whether their historic courthouse, which doesn't have an elevator, could house a new library.
Palmer said while Rothesay Regional Police force currently using the Hampton court would be better served by the Saint John complex, that's not the case for the Hampton and Sussex detachments.
She believes the Sussex courthouse is unique as a satellite court in that it's a hub in a wheel of three cities, each about an hour away, whereas the other satellite courts serve smaller populations with easy access to other centres. It's important to show the minister the number of cases the Sussex court currently sees, projections for the town's growth and how the need for court services will grow, too.
"If council doesn't go after it, they're not going to get it," she said. "The province has to be given notice that Sussex is back on the map."
Fulton agrees that the need for court services will only increase as a new potash mine is built and the town grows.
"Basically the closure has certain profound social implications. Having a courthouse is a measure of the town's importance to the province. It's important infrastructure for the region," he said.
He believes the closure won't save money, will isolate Sussex from free access to justice and could lead to vigilantism not the kind of self-sufficiency the premier had in mind.
"No one's realistically going to take time out of their lives to go all the way to Saint John," he said.
"You'd see people opting out of seeing justice done, it becomes too much bother. It tends to water down our collective response people decide to turn a blind eye.
"You may as well be an outport in Newfoundland."
On a municipal level, a particular peeve for him is that closing the Sussex and Hampton courts "takes the teeth out of bylaws" for those municipalities as well as Sussex Corner and Norton.
"What's the sense of enacting bylaws? Are we really going to drag someone all the way to Saint John on a parking by-law violation?
“Burke got it wrong here,” he said.
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