Karen Graham
Forty ratepayers joined Scott McFadden last Friday evening at Galerie Q for a town hall style meeting about the issues and activities the current council is addressing on behalf of residents. Mayor McFadden began by asking the audience to identify topics of concern, and thirteen items were identified. Allowing a maximum of 9 minutes for each topic during the two hours allotted for the meeting ensured no single topic dominated the conversation, and McFadden proceeded with an informal summary of the successes, challenges and progress on all items of interest to the attentive crowd.
Mayor McFadden at the Town Hall Meeting he organized last Friday evening which covered topics from water, leaves, roads, culverts, to the inevitable budget and much anticipated new Community Centre. Apparently we will soon be moving out of the “dream” stage and into the planning stage on that item. Photo: Karen Graham.
Some had joined the event to learn details of current construction projects, particularly road improvements, some of which are extending beyond their original timeline. The Mayor outlined the road improvement plans for King Street, which will occur in stages and extend into 2017, but will result in a modernized main street with curbs, sidewalks and street lights all the way to the jail building. Residents were curious also about the construction work around the township building, where topsoil has been stripped for future use and the area is being leveled to accommodate pipes for the water service. This area is zoned institutional, so no homes will be built on this area but it is a possible site for a new community centre.
Several discussion topics related to this possibility, including the ongoing capital expenditures required to maintain some of the older, existing facilities such as the Old Millbrook Public School and the aging arena. The audience was assured that spending on these older buildings was limited to what was required to keep them safe and useable, however these buildings are requiring large capital commitments recently to deal with issues including windows and leaks in the roof…
