While municipal election candidates spend the next couple of days hitting the pavement campaigning, one councillor has already secured a seat at the council table.
Rock Whissell will serve as the Ward 1 councillor for a second term. He was acclaimed to the seat when no one registered to run against him in Mountjoy for the Oct. 24 municipal election.
"When I got in four years ago, I wanted to make a difference in our community — I was part of the community, but I thought I could make a change. After four years, I’m not done yet," he said.
In the 2022-26 council term, he wants the city to start planning ahead and putting goals in place.
His top three priorities are planning, using the city's portion of the Municipal Accommodation Tax (MAT), and having an organizing committee with councillors to generate a vision of what the city should like in 20 years.
For planning, the guiding document for municipalities is the Official Plan. Timmins' plan went into effect in 2010. While work started to update it in 2019, it hasn't been finished yet. The community strategic plan — Timmins 2020 — expired two years ago.
The city, Whissell said, needs to look at a permanent stage for concerts. The main fire hall needs to be replaced within the next decade. He wants to stop talking about a bypass road and "put something on paper" to move it forward. He noted city hall is also an old building.
"Can we put something together, a new city hall? But let’s not make the decision today, let’s plan it for six, seven years from now. Let’s put the motion in place so we could start organizing ourselves and not have a big scare or an on-the-spot decision that we have to make. I think council has to make some longer-term decisions. Having to react to what’s happening today is fine when we have to do it, but we need to sit down … and start organizing our community for the next 10 years,” he said.
Council is responsible for the direction city staff take, he said. In the last four years, his experience is that council needs to be more involved.
"We have to have a dream for staff to create that dream for us. Without a direction ... it’s hard for city staff to put something together when they don’t have any direction. So council really has to put more effort into getting something done for the longterm,” he said.
There is money for some projects through the Municipal Accommodation Tax — a four per cent charge on hotels, motels and other short-term accommodations. The city has been collecting it since 2019. Half is redistributed into the community for tourism activities, with the city partnering with the TEDC to be the non-profit entity to reinvest that portion of the cash. The other half of the money goes to city coffers.
A couple of projects using the cash have already been approved by the city for its portion, including $100,000 to update the city's recreation master plan.
"There’s money in the MAT tax that is available to create these locations to improve these. But without a longterm commitment, if we decide to put $100,000 for the next 10 years at the Hollinger Park, well that’s $100,000 that we know is available. So we could borrow money on that $100,000 to do (the) permanent stage, to do (the) washrooms. As long as council has a plan … we know what money is available to organize that future establishment that we want to install. I think we have to have a longer vision,” he said.
Election day is on Oct. 24. Even though the Ward 1 councillor is acclaimed, Mountjoy residents can still vote for mayor and their respective school board trustee.
Advance voting is being done online and runs Oct. 11-24. In-person polls are open on election day. TimminsToday will have live results on election night.
