"Finding ways to make projects work, rather than reasons for them not to" is a theme which rings through council's priorities as well as the work plan that resulted from the core service reviews. Council as a team have agreed to make economic development, improved district business processes and community communications and engagement as key priorities and staff have responded to the challenge.
A great example of how staff has identified a need to provide improved service levels is the reorganization of the development services team, Chris Bishop has assembled an excellent group of committed development services clerks in Dava, Barb, Wendy and Sharon, who will provide a new level of front-line customer service.
Economic development is essential for our community as the need for a wider tax base, family-supporting jobs and commercial opportunities for local businesses has focussed council to work collectively to find solutions. We are making some progress - the sale of land in the business park to Solterra is a small step; council's direction to the Squamish Oceanfront Development Corporation (SODC) to hire a best-in-class marketing agency to put the SODC to an RFP process has the potential of delivering a complete game-changing project to our community. At the same time economic sustainability coordinator Dan McRae continues to work on some solid foundational work such as the business retention and expansion program and recently publishing the Squamish Economic Development News in an effort to better communicate the efforts underway.
Vital to the success of the steps that have been undertaken is feedback and communication from our community. Citizens, contractors, developers all need to provide both positive and negative feedback to council and staff to let us know how things are progressing. A great opportunity to find out more about how the district works, interact and give feedback is during this year's Local Government Awareness Week, May 20 to 26. This is an ongoing initiative with the goal to generate awareness and educate the public about the roles and responsibilities of local government and to encourage the public to participate in local government processes.
One of the activities will be a Mayor for a Day contest that will run next week; students in grades 5 to 7 may submit their essays for why they want to be Mayor for a Day by today (May 17). Look for a full schedule of events in The Chief and on the District of Squamish website.
In closing I thank Kevin Ramsay, our CAO, for his service and good work at the district and wish him well in his new role as city manager of Port Moody. Council will work diligently to find a new CAO over the next month.
