It has been an honour and a pleasure representing you as a Councillor in the Almonte Ward for these past four years. I have put together a little information to help ensure we are able to keep the momentum and direction that the Municipality is currently heading in for the next four years. The past few years have been challenging for all of us to say the least. We lost our Deputy Mayor, John Levi, we endured floods in the spring of 2019 and during the pandemic we lost many members of our community. The pandemic created a new and unpredictable environment making both strategic and financial decisions difficult. There is no blueprint to tell you what to do in these unprecedented situations. We took a very cautious approach early on and it paid off. I am proud to say despite these challenges, we have persevered; we remain stable, we are in good shape financially, and we were also able to accomplish many positive changes without spikes in your taxes.
Over this past term of Council, we have implemented strategic and systematic approaches to almost all aspects of the organization. This included a new Municipal Strategic Plan with a new Org Structure to strengthen the Municipality for the future and upcoming growth. The current Mississippi Mills staff are a proud, dedicated, and hard-working group. The Fire Department that serves our community is second to none. Building a strong team hasn’t been easy. Change is hard, but replacing old and outdated tools and programs, that were long overdue, has been and must continue to be a priority. We are leaps and bounds ahead of where we were four years ago. Although things are forever changing, we are now in a position to be able to easily adapt and handle growth.
We have covered a lot of ground strategically including the Asset Management Plan, Master Fire Plan (just about complete), Community Services Strategic Plan, Community Engagement Strategies, Service Delivery Review, and the Digital Master Plan to name a few.
We completed the Community Official Plan, as well as Official Plan Amendments for the Almonte Settlement area and the Agriculture Land Review. Riverfront Park was completed and Mill Run Park was built this term. We supported the River Walk mill worker staircase and walk and the Day Care expansion to Holy Name of Mary School. Several bridges and large culverts were constructed in rural Mississippi Mills along with several rural roads re-surfaced. We installed pedestrian crosswalks and we have more on the way. We modified the Business Park usages to attract more businesses to the community. We installed a new Water Storage Facility beside the Fire Department to help with capacity and water pressures. We are at the beginning stages of Mill Valley Retirement Village and have started the process for a community dog park. Having done several upgrades including the replacement of roads, sidewalks, water and sewer lines in town, there is still much more to do, and we have started our Downtown Revitalization project to upgrade century old infrastructure in the downtown core. We have been fortunate to receive several large grants this term (in the millions) that has helped us to complete so much without burdening the taxpayers. Seeking financial grants moving forward must remain a focus.
Over the next four years we need to continue tackling a lot of the old infrastructure in town that needs to be replaced or upgraded and plans have been put in place to address these items. I realize replacing infrastructure is not exactly exciting but there is a lot of it and it must be addressed. There are many streets that require re-surfacing throughout town and we need to update our Master Transportation Plan to effectively handle our growth. We need to look at new sidewalks in areas used by seniors such as Houston St. and Spring St. near the hospital.
I would like to see us continue new growth in our Business Park and persuade the owners of the business lots sold previously to develop them to increase our commercial tax base. There has been a lot of talk about enticing new businesses to town, we now have commercial space for them.
The continuation of modernization projects such as IT within the municipality is and has been a priority for myself over the past term. Providing staff better tools to work with while streamlining services for the community is a win win for everyone. Improving online IT for both communication purposes and commerce brings us up to date and removes the old manual processes that have been in place for years.
Speeding is an ongoing issue and is a problem throughout Mississippi Mills. We realize the OPP is stretched to the limits, but we need to continue working with the OPP and the County to address the issue. We need to continue to use traffic calming measures and new technology such as the Black Cat radar devices that have been purchased to direct prime enforcement areas to the OPP.
Recently we administered a Memorandum of Understanding with Carebridge community Support in partnership with Thomas Cavanagh Construction Limited on another parcel of surplus land in town for the construction of a minimum of 10 affordable housing units. Much appreciation to Carebridge and Cavanagh Construction for once again contributing to our community. This and several other clever ways to accomplish affordable housing is in the works and I would like to continue to explore and implement even more means to affordable housing in our community.
I was asked about a highlight in the past term at the All Candidates night and my answer was in December 2018, the first steps were taken to reverse the zoning on Don Maynard Park, by February 2019, Council chose to Finance as the funding option to cover expenses for work done in Gemmill Park previously instead of selling Don Maynard Park. I asked at the time to include an amendment to this motion to seek out and sell surplus non park land to make up for this deficit. In 2022, a package of surplus non-park land in Almonte was put together and sold for 1.2 million dollars making up for the deficit and then some.
The Howard Alan Cost Sharing Agreement has been brought up this election. I am not one to debate items on social media, I was asked to post information about it on my website and I did, with documentation to back up what exactly took place. You can view the Howard Alan Cost Sharing Agreement and the Library portion.
Voting for this election starts October 17th and election day is October 24th. My interest is to support you, whether you are a hometown local or new to the area, I encourage you to get out and vote and I ask for your support to re-elect John Dalgity for the Almonte Ward!
Thank you!
John