On the North Shore, the municipality of Godbout made an offer to purchase a private campground almost five times higher than the municipal assessment, and gave only part of the money to its owner.
At 101 rue Conrad, in Godbout, is the Camping de l’Estuaire. Éric Fraser owns the infrastructure, but he leases the land of nearly 80,000 square meters to the MRC.
To diversify its tourist offer, the municipality of Godbout wanted to buy the campsite in 2021, but without relying on an external market evaluation to set the price, according to the general manager at the time, Chantale Caron, who has since left the village. .
“The first thing to do is to give an external mandate to determine the value of the asset that is the subject of our desires. If we don’t go that way, it traces all the good tracks to slip, “fears the chartered appraiser and president of Côté Mercier Conseil Immobilier, Christian-Pierre Côté,
To establish the price to pay for the campsite, the municipality negotiated with its owner. In a resolution adopted unanimously on June 29, 2021, we read that the final offer is $240,000. It should be noted that the property assessment of the campground by the MRC is $51,700.
“From there to having, twice, three times, four times, five times the municipal evaluation, there is at the very least reason to question ourselves,” noted Christian-Pierre Côté.
“What is disturbing is that this amount of $40,000 roughly corresponds or almost corresponds to the value of the building on the municipal assessment roll,” argued the professor of municipal management at UQAM, Danielle Pilette. .
“What is driving the gap between the $40,000 and $200,000 that appears on resolution? So the question of the $40,000 as a deposit raises more questions than it answers,” she added.
In order for Godbout to operate the campsite during the summer of 2021, the elected officials have agreed to give a deposit of $40,000 to its owner before June 30. Eric Fraser said he incurred expenses to keep the campground running over the summer while the municipality was enjoying the revenue.
The rest was to be paid before the end of the year, but the meeting with the notary scheduled for September was canceled by the municipality, according to the owner of the campsite Éric Fraser and the former general manager, Chantale Caron. Neither of these two people knows exactly who decided to cancel the appointment to sign a notarized agreement.
The owner of the Estuaire campground, Éric Fraser, told TVA Nouvelles that he still had the municipality’s check for $40,000 on hand. “I have discussed with my lawyers the possibility of contributing to your investigation and they have advised me not to transmit any information regarding the file, which, as you know, is not settled,” he said. he writes.
“So I cannot provide any information or documents that are not currently public. I hope you will understand the delicate position in which I find myself at present”, continued the one who claims to have filed a formal notice with the municipality in December 2021.
Will Godbout get her money back?
The minutes of public council meetings available online do not reveal whether the municipality intends to recover the money.
“If the civil servants do not bring the subject back to the minutes, and the elected officials do not ask for it either, perhaps we wait until later until the population has forgotten, and then we would come back with a resolution which would cancel the transaction, or part of the transaction,” suggested Danielle Pilette.
The mayor of Godbout, Jean-Yves Bouffard, declined our request for an interview, claiming that he had to discuss the file with the municipality’s law firm before speaking regarding it publicly.
