Budget Passes
On Monday night the budget *almost* officially passed. I say *almost* only because it still requires an official bylaw to pass it. The increase we will see this year is 3.5%, which is about $100 per year on the average home valued at $320k…I anticipate that there will likely be some more discussion at the next meeting on Monday before the bylaw passes. Councillor Kidd and Deputy Mayor Maycock voted against the budget while Councillors Wilson, Bradley, Campbell and Mayor Williams voted in favour. Councillor Garisto was absent.
Councillor Bradley shared that she is pleased with the level of increase considering the huge cost of the enhancement to the Transit service. Mayor Williams was pleased with the speed at which the budget was completed this year stating that this is the first time that a budget has been completed in November which will give staff the benefit of time.
Stay tuned for the next Council Meeting on Monday, November 14th at Town Hall for the budget officially passing.
What’s your thoughts? How do you feel about 3.5%?
Strategic Plan
This year, Orangeville undertook the task of creating a strategic plan. A consultant from Queens University was hired to facilitate the creation of the plan and to execute the many levels of the plan. There is a survey available online for all residents to complete – but hurry…it closes on Friday, November 11th! CLICK HERE to access the survey and have your voice heard!!!
As well as the survey, there were also two stakeholder sessions held (one of which I was fortunate enough to take part in) as well as a session for Town of Orangeville Management and finally on Tuesday, a workshop for Council. All information from all facets will be compiled and will directly result in the draft of the strategic plan.
I was interested to see that the information that was presented from both stakeholder sessions (approx 30 people) as well as the compiled information from the surveys so far (over 400 surveys) aligned very closely. Below you will see some of the findings:
Session One: screen-shot-2016-11-10-at-10-29-43-am – Lost Photo
Session Two: screen-shot-2016-11-10-at-10-30-50-am – Lost Photo
Survey Results of Priorities Ranked in Order of Importance: screen-shot-2016-11-10-at-10-34-30-am – Lost Photo
For the Council Session that took place at 5:30pm on Tuesday, Councillors Wilson and Garisto were absent. Council was presented the results and then were asked to contribute by voting on their priorities and ranking them in order of importance to themselves.
In order to complete this task, every member of Council was given a laptop with the ‘ThinkTank’ brainstorming software installed on it, which records your votes as you input them and prioritizes responses based on number of people who felt it was a priority. As the first question was asked, Mayor Williams declined participating in the voting because he felt that it was a breach of Council’s bylaws. The Clerk was asked for comment, and she assured everyone that they had spoken to the legal team to ensure that there was no issues and there was no issue with everyone’s participation. Despite that knowledge, the Mayor still declined to participate. Councillors Bradley, Campbell, Kidd and Deputy Mayor Maycock all participated.
It will be interesting to see what the final results are when the draft of the strategic plan is presented to Council in early 2017. Here’s hoping this isn’t just another item that is “received” and put on a shelf somewhere in Town Hall.
Have you done the survey? What do you think the priorities for the Town need to be? Are you aligned with what was identified as Strengths and Opportunities? Anything else you think needs to be added to the list on either side?