Council approaches final year of term

Ambitious agenda will keep Council busy

With municipal elections slated for the fall, Council will have limited time to address a number of pressing items on its agenda, but Mayor Steve Ferguson says that the municipality has risen to the challenges of 2021 and he is optimistic that there will be plenty of progress on all fronts. “The overriding thing in 2021 was having to deal with COVID-19. The arrival of vaccines allowed us to slowly gain some normalcy through much of the year,” he said, noting that the County had offered over 100 vaccine clinics. “I certainly heard anecdotally that our clinics are some of the best run in the region, which is a real accomplishment, and the success would not have been possible without the efforts of our staff, our doctors and nurses, and many, many volunteers.” Ferguson pointed to several other areas of success for the municipality. Over 1,200 building permits, totalling in excess of $21 million of work, were issued in 2021, and that trend is expected to continue in 2022, with proposed developments in Wellington and Picton and the potential afforded by the recent purchase of the Loch Sloy property by PEC Community Partners Inc. Ferguson also pointed to the Tourism Management program, which largely avoided the chaos of 2020 when the County was left reeling by an unmanageable influx of visitors. He also lauded the adoption of a new Official Plan, almost two decades in the making. “The new plan provides us with a more modern path forward ensuring development is both respectful and appropriate, given our history, our environment and our community,” he said. Mayor Ferguson also touted successes in water and wastewater investments, ongoing work on roadways, and progress towards affordable housing with the go-ahead for development of the old Wellington arena site. “The best years of PEC are ahead of us, and we are very mindful that we have investments to make, and we want to make sure we maintain the character of the community we all love so much.”

Mayor Ferguson had words of praise for municipal staff who continued to provide a high level of service through an unusual and difficult year. “Staff have been nothing short of absolutely brilliant. They have risen to the occasion. Nobody has had to deal with a pandemic before, but the staff undertook their responsibilities at all levels. Everyone responded extraordinarily well, and I can’t applaud staff enough for all the help they provided to keep the municipality moving forward in a productive way,” he said.

Looking ahead to the coming session, Mayor Ferguson said there are a few priority areas. One of those is affordable housing, and Ferguson says there are several projects in affordable and attainable housing on the radar for 2022. Another item that leapt onto Council’s dashboard is the looming physician shortage, with five current physicians set to leave the Health Team by the end of October, compounding an already precarious situation. Roads, bridges, parks and other assets, as well as the saga of County Road 49 will fill out Council’s dance card for the remainder of this term.

For Councillor John Hirsch, the adoption of a new Official Plan was one of the highlights of the past year. “It provides very significant protection for natural areas, which is my personal concern, and combining that with the new planning process that was put into place, which is more transparent and much more efficient, I think we are going to be light years ahead,” he said. He also noted that Council has approved major new housing projects in Wellington and Picton, and has obtained commitments from developers to provide upfront payments for water and wastewater infrastructure. He added there are three initiatives on the go to provide affordable housing, with some occupancy predicted for late 2022. With Hirsch’s strong interest in environmental protection, he has some concerns about a number of development projects that will come before Council this year that would not have been allowed under the new Official Plan, but were filed before it was adopted. These include developments in South Marysburgh, Huycks Point, and a proposed 200-unit resort in the west of the County. Although not strictly council business, Hirsch is hoping that the Ontario government will finalize the plan to create a conservation reserve in the Ostrander Point Crown Block and Point Petre Provincial Wildlife Area, something that will provide permanent environmental protection for those lands.

This is Hirsch’s first term on Council, and he says it has been a great experience for him. “It’s nothing like what I expected at all. I had been a viewer of meetings, I have attended and given deputations, but really had no idea what the job actually amounts to. However I quite enjoy it. I take pleasure in being able to help people out. I’ve been very happy doing this work; it takes a while to get used to it, to understand the dynamics of how Council works,” he said. One of the ways Hirsch has been helping County residents is through his daily email updates about the COVID-19 situation. He now sends updates to 257 email addresses, and those are often forwarded to other people. It’s a concise summary of case numbers and hospitalizations, as well as factual reports and news stories from reliable sources. Councillor Hirsch can be reached at jhirsch@pecounty.on.ca