|  | Taking Stock - 6 Months into 2024 |
| Ensuring Sustainable Growth |
| We are so fortunate to live in this wonderful, vibrant community. The BMRA is committed to doing all we can to help maintain our quality of life in the Blue Mountains.
We are also committend to keeping you up-to-date on all of our activies, and so far in 2024, there’s been a lot.
Here goes:
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| | With the 2025 Town budget exercise not yet started, and the 2024 budget long since finalized, the most important outstanding financial initiative is the Town's Corporate Structure Review.
This Review is intended to determine how best to structure and resource the Town's employee group, and to identify Town delivered services that may be considered "Nice-to-do's" and could possibly cease to be provided to save Town expenditures.
The initial report has been published, but it is not yet clear to us what exactly will be its impact beyond some changes to department structures. Given its $300,000 budget, more substantive changes are expected from this work, and we will further engage with Town Staff and Council to get greater clarity on how this will play out.
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| | Our current Council is now half way through its term. On the positive side, they continue to be open and receptive to input from their constituents.
However, we have serious concerns about its ability to act decisively, and take the actions required to move major infrastructure projects forward in an efficient manner. Public concerns are being addressed far too late in the process, which causes costly delays. This will apply further pressure on our ability to grow sustainably.
CAO Everitt is developing a new process for major project management intended to avoid the inefficiencies currently being experienced. This seems to be sorely needed.
The approach we believe that Council must take if the Town's future is to be secured is to; identify what truly constitute the Town's most important priorities, and ensure they are communicated to Town residents, and hold themselves accountable for progress made in delivering them
find a way to hear and accommodate valid constituent concerns without sidetracking the work being done on major projects, in particular critical infrastructure development
resist the temptation to add new projects or activities to the list for Council to deal with that are outside the identified priorities.
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| | The municipal and provincial affairs portfolio continues to be active around two key initiatives Increased transparency from the county
The first is a continued focus on increased transparency from our county level government. Early in June we secured an opportunity to address the newly formed County Finance Committee. The finance committee was created in recognition on the part of the county that business as usual is no longer going to get things done.
We contribute about 30% of the county’s tax revenue, but we only have 15% of the vote on county council.
Our presentation to the finance committee focused on the county budget and methods to consider, such as zero based budgets, when creating budgets in the future.
Hopefully our recommendations will be considered in the next county budget.
As part of our presentation we also requested a sources and uses of capital funds so that we can gain clarity into how projects are prioritized and how those projects are being funded.
We are continuing to follow up on our request for additional information as we have not yet received the requested documentation.
Municipal Governance Structures
The second initiative we are focused on is the progress of discussions on regional governance.
We spoke at a legislative committee hearing on the subject of Simcoe County governance structure. This provincial initiative is focussed on the subject of efficient municipal service delivery. We’ll have more to say about this in a subsequent email.
It’s noteworthy that the topic of municipal governance structures was raised by the Mayor of Owen Sound during recent strategic planning discussion by Grey County council. The Mayor’s opinion is that regional restructing is a possibility that requires some discussion.
Upcoming sessions are being scheduled by us with Owen Sound, Grey Highlands and Blue Mountains.
The purpose is to continue to broaden our knowledge of the issues facing our neighbouring municipalities.
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| Craigleith Community Working Group |
| The CCWG is a collaboration between the Town, Council, BMRA and Blue Mountain Village Association (“BMVA”) to identify matters of concern throughout the Craigleith Area. The group has been focussing on these 5 areas: A detailed description of the items being considered is in the link, below
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| | | Currently, the Town of Blue Mountains has 10-12 major Infrastructure Projects underway, which in total represents a financial commitment approaching $100M, a significant amount relative to our Town’s size,
That’s a lot of money, but it’s truly representative of our expected rapid growth forecast over the next 5-10 years.
Details of the Town’s major Infrastructure projects can be found in the link below. |
| | The Town recently hired a new Director of Operations, Alan Pacheco. Unfortunately, his schedule has not allowed for a face to face meeting to review each of these projects. We expect a formal review meeting will be scheduled shortly after which the BMRA Infrastructure Project Log will be updated and a notice sent to our Ratepayers.
The most impactful Infrastructure Initiative is the servicing of the Campus of Care. Over the past two months, we have had a number of “lively” discussions at Town Council meetings regarding this project and its impact on our community. Council has directed Staff to schedule a Public Meeting to address traffic flow, safety, water systems questions & concerns.
In addition, Council has directed Staff to proceed with Campus of Care engineering design to 60% of final project status. That will be followed by detailed planning with public consultations.
We expect to continue to work collaboratively with the TBM Staff to update our Infrastructure Tracking Log on a semi-annual basis and ensure projects are being effectively managed financially and timelines are met. |
| | There remain significant initiatives that will have lasting impact on the Town of the Blue Mountains. The three that the BMRA is most closely involved with include;
Official Plan Review
The BMRA Planning Subcommittee has been working closely with the Town's Planning Department as the process of updating the Town's Official Plan has been moving forward over the past year. There will be a report out from Planning shortly detailing some of their recommendations, which will be followed by public information sessions in September. As key issues related to maximum building height, density and design guidelines are to be covered, it is of critical importance to the Town's future that we collectively get this right.
Campus of Care
We recently shared with our members a list of questions that we presented to Council regarding the proposed Campus of Care development. It is to include a 160-bed Long Term Care facility, housing for the facility's service workers, seniors housing, and market priced condominium buildings. Receiving responses to those questions is required to ensure that Council is operating with transparency and accountability with regard to this initiative, and the concerns raised regarding the Town’s potential financial exposure, infrastructure servicing plan, development density and local transportation are addressed.
TBM Housing Strategy Working Group
Like most Town residents, the BMRA has been extremely frustrated with the almost total lack of progress in addressing TBM's skewed housing mix, and absence of rental housing that can be accessed by our service business employees. We decided that it would be most productive to form a working group composed of representatives of the development industry, TBM Chamber of Commerce, and the Southern Georgian Bay Institute, to create a set of housing strategy recommendations for consideration by Town Council and Staff. The working group has been endorsed by Council, and work is proceeding with a focus on; identifying and quantifying the extent of our housing needs determining the barriers and challenges that have caused the lack of progress in meeting those needs recommendations regarding the tools, resources and approaches that could help solve our housing problems
The TBM Housing Strategy Working Group will be continuing its efforts through the remainder of 2024 to deliver against its mandate
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| | TBM launched a community sustainability plan in 2022 named The Blue Mountains Future Story (“TBMFS”) outlining 20 “Bold Actions” to be undertaken in the first five years of its implementation. |
| | The 2023 Future Story Implementation Report outlines the activities carried out in the first year, which include:
Activities in 2024 include:
Bold Action 19: Host an Annual Community Sustainability Summit - the first annual Blue Mountains and Area Sustainability Summit was hosted on April 25, 2024 to discuss circular economy and green economy topics. It was attended by 120 community stakeholders. To date no summary of actions steps identified in the summit has been posted.
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| As part of the BMRA's heightened focus on TBM sustainability, we will be tracking and reporting back on progress the Town makes with the Future Story initiatives.
We will be looking to the Town to; realize the projected environmental benefits meet the stated deliverables / timelines demonstrate fiscal prudence in their program design and execution
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| Please forward this email to interested friends & neighbours(They may thank you… or they may not care. But they won’t hate you!) |
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