Wilmot council passes strategic action plan for next four years

Councillors in Wilmot have approved a plan that will be used to help guide decision-making over the rest of the term.

On Monday, councillors voted 3-2 to pass the plan, which includes four main goals such as financial stability, healthy community, trustworthy leadership and having prosperous businesses and balanced growth.

The final document, put together by Linton Consulting, was presented on Oct. 16. It included data from months of public consultation plus meetings with council and staff, including 626 responses from the community and 61 responses from staff.

Ward 2 Coun. Kris Wilkinson, who voted against the plan, said there should have been more time to review the “heavy document,” which he said council received on Oct. 16, only five days until the vote.

“So to pass it on that kind of notice and put it into action is kind of premature and irresponsible,” said Wilkinson. He added that Wilmot Mayor Natasha Salonen was not present during the meeting for the vote.

“Something as our strategic plan, I think it would have been beneficial to make sure she was there to have debate and input on the document as well.”

Wilkinson said while there was consultation done for the report, he didn’t think it was enough and wanted to go back to constituents to see what their opinion on it was before approving it.

“I don’t feel like it was robust,” said Wilkinson. “While I represent my constituents from Ward 2, I think there are pieces from here that are missing and I don’t think it’s fully reflective of what the township ultimately wants.”

Ward 4 Coun. Steven Martin, who was acting mayor during Monday’s meeting, said there was enough time to review the plan and any further delaying could have been seen as council trying to not allow staff to do their work.

“Two years have passed since the election, and we have only now approved the strategic action plan,” said Martin. “Often times, the plan is approved in the first few months of a new council.”

In a statement to CityNews Kitchener, Ward 4 Coun. Lillianne Dunstall, who voted in favour of approving the plan, said council had unanimously approved the consultants to “navigate us through our Strategic Plan process.”

“The public was consulted at two meetings, service clubs were consulted, each councillor had a one on one with the consultants, and each director had a one on one,” said Dunstall.

“We then had two lengthy sessions with all of Council and the senior leadership team at the table.  We discussed our gaps and solutions and came to a consensus of the priorities we needed to deal with to move our Township forward and increase efficiencies and customer service to our constituents. We have talked about our issues for months deferring and deferring. We need to get this moving. It was unfortunate that the Mayor was not available, but we were five out of six and each only get one vote.”

A final document will be completed within three weeks by the consultation group, Linton Consulting, for the public.