A Dryden council meeting has revealed the municipality received $4 million for the sale of their mobility assets to TBayTel.
The deal was struck last fall and at that time the terms were not released. Dryden Municipal Telephone Service’s landline and Internet businesses were sold to Bell Aliant at the same time for $4.5 million.
TBayTel would not provide comment, saying the deal is confidential. However, Dryden Mayor Craig Nuttall said they had to release their audit statements.
“Dryden residents have to know what’s going on,” he said. “We couldn’t release how much we got from TBayTel until our financial statements so we did keep our word and we didn’t release it.”
DMTs mobility assets included about 3,000 customers and a couple of towers.
Nuttall said he thinks $4 million was reasonable but they could have received more if they sold it sooner.
“Some seven years ago, we were offered some $13 million and also the accounting firm told us to sell and the previous council and mayor decided, ‘no, we’re going to see if we can bail this place out,’” he said.
“There's just no bailing it out. We had to sell it.”
DMTS was losing $10,000 a day, said Nuttall, adding selling the service was their only option.
“I’m very disappointed we had to lay all these people off. It’s one of those things if you’re not making money on a certain utility, you have to do something, either privatize it or sell it,” Nuttall said.
