Re-elected Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy says in this next term of council, there will be opportunities to build new relationships, share new ideas, refresh some City plans, and attract new jobs and industry.
Boddy says, “I’m looking forward to working with this council and seeing where it goes because there are some fresh faces and some fresh ideas and I think it’s going to be a really fun four years.”
“First priority course, is going to be sitting down with new councillors and starting to plan out what we all want to do and putting together a plan to go forward in the next term,” says Boddy.
Boddy says, “Certainly the thing that I want to do is really take advantage of the opportunities around us to attract new industry and jobs and prosperity. That’s going to be my priority.”
He explains, “With the Clean Energy Frontier, with things like Hydrogen Optimized, with opportunities like TC Energy pumped storage over at the (4th Canadian Division) training facility, there’s bound to be some opportunities there for our industrial park that we can take advantage of and start to chase after. Any time you’ve got a company that comes in like Hydrogen Optimized, there’s chances or opportunities to leverage those with other industries that are maybe similar, or supply them, or provide opportunities to try and attract new players.”
Boddy says there is room in the city’s industrial park for growth, noting, “There’s lot’s of vacant land and there’s still room certainly in the (former) Tenneco building itself for other industry, I believe,” adding, “There are opportunities land-wise to attract some industry and do some building.”
He says, on the horizon for this council is a service review discussion and adds, “We’ll be redoing the strategic plan for the City in the next year or so, development charges will come up again for review in January.”
He says, “We did an internal service review between 2014 and 2018 and I believe we found something in the neighbourhood of $800,000 in savings, however, then we got hit with insurance increases and with some commercial assessment appeals that kind of ate some of that up. This time we’ve used federal funding to hire an external objective review.”
Also ahead, Boddy says a strategic plan refresh is due for discussion, noting the City did a strategic plan refresh when City Manager Tim Simmonds was hired in 2020. “You want to keep it fresh and updated because the world changes rapidly,” says Boddy.
He also feels these newly elected councils in the region have opportunities to make new connections.
“Any time there’s a new council, new mayors et-cetera in the area we’ve got an opportunity to sit down and see if we’ve got any common ground, common interests that we can move forward together on. I think there’s going to opportunities to start those discussions again in the area, certainly across Grey County and see if we can find other areas that we can work together on,” says Boddy.
This is Boddy’s third term as mayor and fourth term on council.
Also elected this term are, Scott Greig, Travis Dodd, Jon Farmer, Brock Hamley, Marion Koepke, Suneet Kukreja, Carol Merton, and Melanie Middlebro.