by James Matthews
The transfer of a communications tower ownership in Minden Hills has broached questions about insurance.
The township owns the land on Scotch Line where the radio communications tower for the Minden Hills Fire Department and Public Works repeaters are located.
The tower is currently owned by a group called Netcom and they lease the property from the township and maintain the tower.
Township council heard Dec. 12 that Netcom’s owners are looking to retire and hope to transfer ownership of the tower to Kirk Chatten of Bearcom. Basically, they’d like to have Bearcom take Netcom’s place within the lease agreement.
Bearcom is the company that services, provides, and installs all of the communications equipment used by the Fire and Public Works departments.
Netcom pays an annual fee for the land, and it’s hoped Bearcom would take over the payments and enter into a lease agreement with the township.
“We already do a great deal of business interactions with them, so it’s just the simple matter of transferring the ownership,” said Don Kruger, the municipality’s fire chief.
Councillor Tammy McKelvey asked why the site has a $2 million insurance policy when the township carries $5 million in insurance for other assets.
Vicki Bull, the township’s clerk, said $5 million policies are typically the norm.
“However, the $2 million was approved in a previous contract for the previous owner,” Bull said. “And council actually did discuss that when we reviewed that contract at that time.”
“I have a problem with that because we’re causing everybody else to have $5 million (insurance policies) whether it’s a builder or a contractor cutting grass,” Coun. Ivan Ingram said. “I don’t think they should be an exception. They should have to provide the $5 million as well.”
“I would really like to see that changed to $5 million,” McKelvey said. “This is our fire department’s radio system, our roads department’s radio system. This is important. I don’t see the wisdom of $2 million, and the old agreement was 10 years old. Things have changed.”
“We already have a long-term lease for this tower and for the site and the equipment,” Kruger said. “If we were to reopen that lease, we would have to reopen all those negotiations.”
“We’re being asked to consider a lease agreement with this person,” McKelvey said. “It’s not even a limited company. I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“We already have the lease agreement,” Kruger said. “We’re not changing the lease agreement. We’re not proposing to change the lease agreement. We’re just proposing changing the ownership.”
“It was a 10-year term?” Mayor Bob Carter said.
“That is correct,” Kruger said.
“And when did that start?” Carter said.
Kruger said the township entered into the lease before he started in his position. But, he said, the current council lowered the “lease amount” this year.
“We did discuss reducing the lease amount, definitely,” McKelvey said. “This council approved that. This is a new lease being proposed for 10 years with a new company.”
As such, she said she’d like council to have the insurance discussion so council can decide if there will be a change.
“I’m just trying to determine the necessity of finalizing this today as compared to the next meeting,” Carter said.
“My understanding is that they (Netcom’s owners) have basically retired already,” Kruger said.
Bull said there had been some procedural confusion by Netcom regarding the transfer of ownership.
“The same lease is before council that was proposed before,” she said. “We didn’t change anything in the lease.”
Council took a break to “straighten out some of (the) details in the background,” Carter said.
After the break, it was decided to defer the issues for discussion during a future meeting.
