Editor's Note: It's New Year's Day - the perfect day to look back at the previous year and look ahead to the coming year. With that in mind, we've asked the mayor and all eight city councillors a series of five questions about past accomplishments and future goals. We will publish their answers throughout the day. We kick things off with the mayor's responses. We will then publish, ward by ward, the responses of your city councillors.
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Orillia Mayor Steve Clarke provided the following responses to our questions.
1.What do you think is the most significant accomplishment of this council from 2019?
With many significant projects underway in 2019, I would still have to point to the announcement of Hydro One and her significant investment in Orillia. Their investment, ‘north’ of $150 million, will provide high-quality jobs for people in Orillia and area for decades to come. Further, the additional economic spinoff for businesses will be considerable, across many sectors.
2. What is your top priority for 2020?
I cannot point simply to one and any priority must certainly align with the desire or desires of council. Certainly, opening our long-awaited community centre is paramount and we will be celebrating that grand-opening early in the new year.
Moving the RFP process along to facilitate the redevelopment of the Front Street area (between our beautiful waterfront and our historic downtown), is also a main priority. This will be transformative as this project will add pedestrian, commercial and residential vibrancy to this important link area.
Obtaining approval for the second part of our negotiated contract with Hydro One is also paramount as this will further add significant investment and job creation in our community as well as help to replenish our reserve funds.
As well, in 2020 we will have to investigate ways of adding employment land inventory to meet the needs of the ever-increasing demand for new and expanding businesses.
3. What is the biggest challenge facing this council in 2020?
Seeing the aforementioned projects through to significant completion will continue to be a challenge. I have learned the most important and transformative projects are comprehensive, complex and take time, some taking years. And yet, with new items or projects coming forward, we cannot take any attention away from existing programs.
This is a challenge for council, but even more so for our staff who, I believe, are in the midst of an unprecedented level of work seeing existing projects through.
Another challenge is the unknown nature of financial pressure from senior levels of government to our municipality. We felt some of that pressure at our recent budget deliberations and it is expected it will continue into next year.
With downloading from the province and the county, added with increases from our OPP contract and Public Health Unit and combined with a doubling of our waste pick-up contract, council was already at an almost 2% increase in tax levy before we contemplated anything else. Add to that a relatively modest one-and-a-half percent increase in staff contracts, we were already at 3.4% before we sat down and opened our books. Some of these pressures will indeed be present at our next budget session.
Another challenge or significant aspect of the job is to constantly monitor how the city is delivering services such as winter operations, traffic flow, water/waste water, climate change mitigation and adaptation (This is an area of growing concern. We are hearing that climate change is here, it is significant and will continue to impact us locally and certainly beyond).
The bottom line is how can we improve, where and when to implement changes. We just completed a very comprehensive review of our service delivery and, therefore, will be evaluating possible changes in the near future.
4. What is your New Year's Resolution as Mayor of Orillia?
My resolution as mayor is to continue to lead this great group on council and maintain the spirit of positive teamwork that has got us to this point (even when we disagree) and do this with our terrific staff.
5. What is your New Year's Resolution as a citizen?
I am not a huge proponent of New Year’s resolutions as I believe we should be reviewing things that are important to us all year long. Having said that, a couple of items I will work on are: spending more quality time with my wonderful and expanding family, nurturing friendships and maintaining a good level of health and fitness.
