At Monday’s (Sept. 18) council meeting, members will receive an update on the city’s Strategic Plan which covers the period 2021 through this year.
The plan was originally adopted by city council in May of 2013.
The city engaged the services of Fanshawe Corporate Training Solutions in June 2019 to assist in a plan update.
At that time, the idea was to develop a short list of strategic themes for the city’s path forward.
This included a focus group of community stakeholders and a public and city staff survey which included 539 respondents and produced a list of 25 key themes.
In June of 2020 that was whittled down to the Top 10 strategic priorities.
Topping the list was infrastructure, including roads, bridges and sewers.
The Number 2 priority was emergency shelters for the homeless.
And, rounding out the Top 3 was affordable housing.
Moving forward three years, let’s look at today’s updated strategic plan.
Category Archives: Green Energy
A change in St. Thomas Canada Day fireworks venue lights up more than just the sky
The announcement from the city seemed harmless enough.
Canda Day celebrations this year will culminate in a spectacular fireworks display.
However, the light-up-the-sky show will take place at 1Password Park and not the traditional venue in Pinafore Park.
We asked Mayor Joe Preston what prompted the change in location.
He noted 1Password Park “has three accesses, a lot more parking and it gives us the ability to put on a better fireworks show.”
A reference, no doubt, to the tighter confines at Pinafore and the proximity of neighbouring homes.
Preston continued, “In discussions with the Kinsmen, who help us with the fireworks and also help us with Canada Day, we thought IPassword would be a great thing to try.”
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A $13+ billion VW investment means “the future is going to be strong and bright for people in St. Thomas and right across the country.” – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
It’s been many decades since St. Thomas could hoist the banner, Railway Capital of Canada. Before the end of the decade, however, could the city become the EV Battery Capital of Canada?
The numbers bandied about Friday (April 21) sure point in that direction.
Hosted appropriately enough at the Elgin County Railway Museum, politicians from all levels of government plus officials from Volkswagen and its battery operation, PowerCo, along with city staff were on hand to provide further details on the gigafactory to be located in the new industrial park on the eastern limits of the city.
Technically the EV battery announcement was made last month at city hall, yesterday’s event was an opportunity to fill in the many blanks in order to shed more light on just how massive this facility will be, not to mention the financial gigaincentives dangled by the feds and the province.
In his address to the gathering, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called St. Thomas the place to build the future together.
And he wasted no time addressing the elephant in the room.
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The competition was ‘intense’ however St. Thomas wins the bidding war for Volkswagen EV battery plant
After about a year’s worth of talks between Volkswagen, and the federal and provincial governments, the deal was made public this past Monday.
The automaker announced it was locating an electric-vehicle battery plant in St. Thomas.
It’s Volkswagen’s first overseas gigafactory.
It’s a logical choice given the city’s location, its proximity to essential minerals mined in Northern Ontario and required for production and the provincial deal just consummated that brings hundreds of acres of Central Elgin land into the confines of St. Thomas.
The plant will be operated by Volkswagen’s battery division, PowerCo.
Few details were made available on the size of the plant, the number of workers to be employed and how much will the deal ultimately cost taxpayers in this country.
More on that in a moment.
Following the announcement around noon on Monday, Mayor Joe Preston advised this is only the beginning.
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Estimated meter readings are water torture for some St. Thomas customers
How’s that water bill of yours? Are you going to have to dip into your savings or line of credit to pay the latest bill?
Some city residents have received much higher bills than normal and we contacted Jim Hogan, president and CEO of Entegrus. The city of St. Thomas contracts out meter reading to the utility who, we find out, subcontracts it to a third party.
According to Hogan, the bills have been estimated readings only for several months and those estimates do not necessarily jive with actual usage.
“It’s kind of a catch-up and a balancing between some of the estimates may be a little high and some were a little low and we’re working hard to get out there to do the actual reads, to verify the actual reads.”
The money collected is then paid to the city on a contractual basis.
According to the formal agreement between the city and Ascent/St. Thomas Energy signed in April 2014, St. Thomas Energy “will pay to the municipality the water and wastewater charges billed to the customers by the end of the month following the date of invoicing.”
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C.J. Allen delegation to St. Thomas council Monday to focus on “bureaucratic and redundant red tape and restrictive bylaws”
The agenda for Monday’s (Jan. 16) council meeting reveals what should prove to be a no-punches-pulled deputation from C.J. Allen.
He is the chair of the Good Vibes Community Association (GVCA)board of governors.
If you are not familiar with the GVCA, it was the producer of last year’s inaugural Summer Harvest Festival held in Pinafore Park.
A well-attended event that is to become an annual attraction in the park.
Allen has outlined four areas of discussion and with deputations limited to 10 minutes, he’s going to have to move quickly through his presentation.
First up is GVCA’s experience and feedback concerning the city’s special event process and the interaction with city departments, specifically in relation to last year’s festival.
Next up is a look at the city’s strategic plan and specifically Commitment 1 under the Vibrant Community banner.
This area of the plan has a mandate to “Enhance opportunities for connection and development to promote growth for people and businesses in the city.”
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An answer to ‘Why are we still talking about this?’
We live today in a house so divided. However, yesterday (Friday) over the noon hour at city hall, a hundred or so individuals were able to cast aside their differences and unite in what the colour orange represents.
The sea of orange gathered to commemorate National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day.
A day to remember but equally important to learn.
To learn what we were never taught in school.
The dark chapter in this country’s history.
A chapter finally seeing the light of day as a result of hundreds and ultimately thousands of unmarked graves of young children.
Young Indigenous children, the victims of cultural genocide.
Students snapped from their homes and shuffled off to residential schools where their identities were erased.
The last of which closed as recently as 1996.
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‘People should be able to assess their own risk and make their own decisions’ – Matt Millar, New Blue Party of Ontario
Founded in 2020, the New Blue Party of Ontario is led by Jim Karahalios, the husband of Belinda Karahalios, former PC MPP for Cambridge and now the party’s first MPP.
She was turfed from the PC caucus after voting against Bill 195, the Reopening Ontario Act, which she described as “an unnecessary overreach on our parliamentary democracy.”
New Blue identifies itself as “an anti-establishment centre-right political party.”
The party aims to field candidates in all ridings for the June 2 provincial election.
It has put forward Matt Millar, a life-long Lambeth resident, as its prospective candidate for Elgin-Middlesex-London.
A third-generation fruit farmer who also operates a small tech support company, Millar advises the party is all about less government involvement.
“The reason I got into this is I just want people to have more control over their own lives. I don’t want the government to be overbearing and forcing people to do things they don’t want.”
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‘Trying to make decision-makers . . . understand that things are different in rural Ontario’ – Andy Kroeker, NDP candidate for EML
The three major parties have now announced their candidates to run in Elgin-Middlesex-London in the June provincial vote.
All three were acclaimed.
In the first week of March, the NDP announced Andy Kroeker as their candidate to contest the riding with the Conservatives’ Rob Flack and the Liberals’ Heather Jackson.
Kroeker has been the executive director of the West Elgin Community Health Centre for the past dozen years.
Working in health care, Kroeker says he has witnessed how underfunding has impacted rural communities in particular.
It’s just one item on a substantial “laundry list” of concerns that need to be addressed.
“Certainly I have my concerns about healthcare,” stresses Kroeker, “social services and affordable housing and education.
“So there is a long laundry list, I guess, of things which are challenging in a post-COVID environment.”
