Duane Hicks
Following an all-day session at Sunny Cove Camp last Thursday, a strategic plan outlining Fort Frances council’s priorities for the next three-and-a-half years should be ready to be released to the public in the next month or so.
Council and administration spent the day analyzing the town’s current vision and mission statements, identifying corporate values, current challenges and opportunities, goals, strategies to implement goals and, finally, an action plan for the implementation of strategies.
“We identified areas council intends to discuss, put them in a plan, and kind of prioritized the plan—what should be done and what shouldn’t be done,” Mayor Roy Avis noted Friday morning.
“Plus, this year we asked for input from individuals and groups, and we received that, and that’s all been moved into our strategic plan,” he added.
“That was very worthwhile,” said Coun. Andrew Hallikas. “We started at 9 a.m. and went until well into the evening, but everybody was engaged all day and we really got a lot of work done.
“We had some really good input into our strat plan from the public, as all of those items were looked at and discussed,” he added.
“We were quite pleased with the input we got from the public; that’s always great.”
A summary of the public input is as follows:
•the town’s Economic Development Advisory Committee recommended council develop strategies to prepare the community to maximize the potential the town receives as a result of mining activity, support commercial renewal, review the current portfolio of housing options, market Fort Frances as a low-cost solution for industries servicing the Canadian west and north and U.S.. Midwest, and market Fort Frances as a location for federal and provincial service spending;
•resident Gerald Martin asked that the alley/laneway off McKenzie Avenue, by the Ukrainian Hall, be upgraded and designated as a street and marked as a fire lane;
•the Active Transportation Committee requested council integrate active transportation in the town’s budget and infrastructure process, and that council renew its commitment to follow-up on the recommendations of the ATC and implement recommended actions and programs;
•resident Eleanor E. Laur asked council to consider the implementation of water meters for residents;
•resident Stan Sockolotuk requested council to lobby senior government for funds to reinstate local bus service, as well as change the route of transport trucks from Scott Street to Second Street East;
•resident John Steinke asked three requests of council, including to install residential water meters at the town’s cost (if council chooses to go that route), to review its spring clean-up along the waterfront, as he feels the current method simply disperses debris (including dog feces) into the air, and to review the effective use of town labourers and consider privatization of that work force;
•Erma Armit, chair of the local Assisted Living Action Group, requested council give consideration to these needs and engage seniors in a part of the process in order to promote a senior-friendly community and to decrease the out-migration of seniors; and
•health educator Becky Holden, with the Northwestern Health Unit, recommended council to consider the 2010 Community Engagement Summary Report in its strategic planning.
This report indicates four top community priorities, such as increasing awareness and education to families around substance misuse, increasing safe activities for youth to reduce substance misuse, increasing community cohesion among service providers, and creating safe and active routes to increase active living.
A sampling of the areas to be covered in the strategic plan include commercial revitalization and the downtown core area (including the fate of the old Rainy Lake Hotel), seniors’ issues and assisted living, mill property reassessment and the potential impact on the community, and transportation infrastructure (including the Active Transportation Plan).
Other areas on the long list include a “Go Local” retail loyalty program, partnerships with First Nations and the private sector (especially the emerging mining industry), housing and property availability, and water meters.
“The discussion on water meters has been left in the plan,” said Mayor Avis.
“We didn’t make a total decision on where we were going to go, but it’s identified that it’s something we have to do something about.”
Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig said administration now will compile all of the information from the planning session, present it to council in draft form (possibly as early at its June 27 meeting), take it back to the management group and assign responsibilities for tasks, assign completion dates for tasks to monitor progress, and then bring the final version back to council to be officially accepted.
Then it will be available to the public.
The whole process should take about a month or so, added McCaig.
“It will be become a document that the administration lives by, and council lives by, over the next three-and-a-half years,” noted Mayor Avis.
McCaig said the strategic plan for the 2006-10 term of council had “a high completion rate,” and every objective in it was done.
Or, in the case of some ongoing issues, they were move forwarded into this new strategic plan.
“Most of the time we spent looking at what we accomplished over the last four years and how we’d been true to our last strat plan,” echoed Coun. Hallikas.
“We were quite pleasantly surprised we had adhered to it, and most that stuff was done or ongoing.”
But Coun. Hallikas added they also looked at how times have changed, especially in terms of the economy.
“We sat down, did some brainstorming—what’s changed since last time, how do we plan for that, how do we take these different things into account,” he explained.
“It was a marathon session, very tiring, but I came away feeling very positive, very upbeat, about the process and the plan that will come out of the process.”
