The sale of Bruce Telecom to Eastlink will be back on the table for discussion.
Kincardine council voted 5-4 in favour of directing Mayor Anne Eadie to open talks with Eastlink aimed at gauging if it still has interest in purchasing the publicly-owned Bruce Telecom.
Eadie says she will make a preliminary inquiry with Lee Bragg, the CEO of Eastlink's parent company, Bragg Communications, to see if he wants to re-visit the Bruce Telecom sale.
She says if there's interest, they will have to work through the issues raised by the Competition Bureau that lead to Eastlink pulling out of the $26-million deal.
"[I will] just initiate the conversation and see if he is still interested in sorting out a negotiation that meets the requirements of the Competition Bureau, because that has to be worked around. So that's the very first step," says Eadie.
Councillor Randy Roppel voted against reopening talks and says council was shown a series of correspondence between Eastlink and the municipality during a closed session, and while he can't reveal the content in those letters, he says it's clear to him Eastlink has no further interest in Bruce Telecom.
"The letters that were shown to council were confidential, and to me it spells it out. As far as I'm concerned, the deal is dead. Why are we spending taxpayers money? To gain what? Lets put our house in order and get back to business," says Roppel.
Eadie says she plans to contact Eastlink later this week in hopes of getting talks restarted.
