Strong Services Make Strong Communities

Building a municipality that works for the people who call Cramahe home

A strong municipality starts with strong municipal services.

Services keep our community running. We need clear roads after winter storms, beautiful parks and public spaces, clean water, prompt responses to emergencies, and access to administrative services.

Essential municipal services should remain public; Cramahe Township should maintain the in-house expertise and capacity needed to deliver them well.

Protecting the services we rely on

It is very important to make sure the Township can maintain the capacity to meet the standard of services residents have come to expect. When these expectations are not met there must be accountability and transparency around why residents are experiencing this and when this gap can be closed. Whether it be a delay in ploughing municipal roads following a snowstorm, a damaged portion of a playground, a pedestrian bridge requiring repair or a waterway experiencing a blockage leading to flooding.

Our roads, facilities, parks, recreation programs, fire services are investments in our community.

I want to see us continue to invest in the people, equipment and infrastructure required to maintain these services, while taking a sustainable long-term approach to planning and asset management.

We should continue to prioritize:

Roads & Winter Maintenance

Safe, reliable roads are essential to residents, farmers, businesses, emergency services and visitors. We need the resources and equipment to maintain them properly and respond when conditions change.

Water & Wastewater

These are fundamental services that require responsible long-term planning, maintenance and investment. Maintaining our infrastructure today helps prevent much larger costs tomorrow.

Fire & Emergency Services

The safety of our residents and our volunteer firefighters must remain a priority. That means ensuring our emergency services have the resources, training and support they need.

Parks, Recreation & Public Spaces

Our parks and public spaces are more than amenities. They are where neighbours meet, families gather and community happens. Investing in these spaces contributes directly to quality of life and community pride.

Public first. Value always.

Supporting public services does not mean believing that every job must always be performed by a Township employee. Though our Township staff are very skilled there are circumstances than can arise that are out of their scope. Specialized contractor may come with a larger price tag but these are situations where the value of a long term investment is assessed. The sentiment of buy it nice or buy it twice, in the long run buying it twice often results in higher spending.

Let me share a story from early in my career running large scale events to help illustrate. In an effort to save on costs the hospitality operations would 'share' a piece of heavy equipment and an operator with the production operations. However, the same machine and operator could not be in two places at once. If Tom was off building the stage in the 8K he could not receive our 20 pallet delivery. Therefore, additional labour and delivery costs would be incurred while waiting. Then when Tom came to move the pallets his skill set was not in line with preserving the safety of the product on our pallets. Dropping a pallet of vodka and breaking half of the was not a budgeted expense, nor should it be. Following this we invested in a dedicated piece of equipment with an operator that could do donuts without spilling the coffee he forgot on top of the equipment cab. Bryan was highly skilled and even though the initial line item on our budget was higher, in the end that number did not change nor did this line item never bled into our labour, delivery or product costs. When consolidating the budget the cost of the larger initial investment was lower.

When assessing municipal service value I would refer to the perspective I gained from running large scales events for upwards of 15, 000 to 20, 000 attendees.

I believe my history as an Operation Director helps equip me to answer the following questions through an experienced lens:

• What does the service actually cost to deliver in-house?

• What level of service do residents currently receive?

• What would contracting it out cost over the long term?

• Do we have the ability to oversee and hold an outside provider accountable?

• What happens when there is an emergency or the contractor is unavailable?

• Are we losing important knowledge or expertise within the Township?

• Is there a better opportunity to share resources or services with neighbouring municipalities or the County?

Building capacity, not cutting budgets

Cheap solutions cost taxpayers more in the long run. When there is a job to do, I mean to get it done right.

That means looking for efficiencies, eliminating unnecessary duplication, planning ahead and asking difficult questions about how we deliver services. Fiscal responsibility should not automatically mean doing and spending less. Sometimes the smartest investment is building our own capacity.

Having experienced municipal staff, local knowledge, appropriate equipment and strong institutional knowledge makes us better positioned to respond to the needs of our community, today and in the future.

There is also something to be said about exploring in the investment of providing education and expanding the skillset of in house staff in order to equip the team possess a broad scope of capability.

A municipality that works for its residents

Cramahe is a community worth investing in.

Our municipal government should have the people, resources and infrastructure necessary to deliver reliable services, respond when residents need us and plan responsibly for the future.

Value first. Community always.