Mayor Steve Ferguson reflected on the challenges facing County Council.

Lack of affordable housing is #1.  The price of houses rose 57% between 2015-2019 and the rental vacancy rate was 0.8% in 2019. Council has identified two sites suitable for affordable housing: the old Wellington arena land, where the goal is to get the site “shovel-ready” and the Queen Elizabeth School property. Council also looks to increase supply of new housing. Projects under discussion could add 2300 housing units over 10 years.

Challenge #2 is flooding along the shoreline;  water levels remain 18” above average for this time of year.

Mayor Ferguson shared other news: The new CAO, Marcia Wallace, came on board in December with an impressive resume. Municipal budget priorities are: addressing insufficient funding for maintenance/renewal of core infrastructure (water, waste water, roads) and increasing revenues. An accommodation tax and a gate levy at provincial parks are being introduced and assistance is being sought from the province/federal government for infrastructure funding. Re the new hospital, stage 3 approval is overdue but expected imminently and he thanked the Rotary Club for our leadership in fundraising. An engineering study is underway re a new water tower for Wellington. Re a point of contact with County staff, to get things done, contact Todd Davis.

Other Business:

John Heeringa gave his classification speech. He was born in Ajax and worked at GM for 31 years, where he looked after 6 million square feet of buildings. He retired 11 years ago at age 51 and moved to the County with his wife who was originally from Cherry Valley. She died of cancer in 2014. He married his new wife Robin in 2016.

President Dave asked us to give thought to how we can help the wildfire victims in Australia.