Gravenhurst Council eliminates environmental focused Sustainability Committee
Gravenhurst Councilors agreed to discontinue their environmentally focused Sustainability Committee, and replaced it with a Trails Committee, in the June 18, 2024, Council meeting.
Staff recommended replacing the Committee with the Trails Committee instead.
Staff will complete the previous education initiatives from the environmental Sustainability Committee “as appropriate,” such as investigating and reporting back to Council about becoming a certified bee city, which was included in the Committee’s 2023 workplan.
Councillor, Randy Jorgensen, suggested that volunteers are more interested in the field work in areas such as trails, rather than participating in a formal Committee governance process.
Director of Legislative Services/Clerk, Kayla Thibeault, advised that the Town can still create working groups “within formal sub-committees,” for areas such as trail maintenance. She indicated that formal sub-committees are “an appropriate body for that.”
She added, “When we’re dealing with public funds, public properties, and we have a level of accountability in terms of transparency, those frameworks are essential for meeting all those checks and balances.”
She continued that a recommendation for a formal Trail Committee was a part of the Master Plan.
Regarding Jorgensen’s concern about the challenges of attracting people to sit on a formal committee, CAO, Scott Lucas, advised that the meetings can be scheduled quarterly or annually as an option “to lessen the governance impact.”
Jorgensen said that he’s been informed that the Trail’s Committee is “almost defunct.” He suggested that connecting with a larger Muskoka group would be more benefitting to the Town, “especially if we’re going to attract people.”
Councillor, Sandy Cairns, indicated that during her time on the Muskoka Trails Committee people have expressed they don’t have time to be on committees in a formal capacity.
Councillor, Penny Varney, asked, “Is our town going to be missing out on something because Sustainability is disappearing?”
Director of Community Growth and Development, Melissa Halford, advised that staff are still working on various initiatives, including adaptation and mitigation on behalf of the Climate Action Plan.
She added that the recent work plans from the Sustainability Committee was focused on education, such as the Bee City initiative to try and make the Town a certified bee city, which staff will continue.
She said, “There was a lot of passion in the group and lots of ideas but not perhaps the follow through or what their role would be in terms of wider public engagement.” She suggested that other groups are implementing some of their initiatives anyhow.
“I’m not going to say it couldn’t add value and that it wasn’t, but there are other avenues to conduct that work and in fact it is happening as we get more involved in climate change adaptation and mitigation. A lot of those elements are sustainably focused and are wider environment focused, so it’s almost 10 birds with one stone kind of thing,” said Halford.
She continued that the initial reasons the Committee was started may no long exist. She said, “We may have more robust systems in place to add those matters more efficiently.”
Cairns adamantly expressed that she doesn’t support eliminating the Committee which she was on, but rather to change the name back to the Environmental Committee for greater clarity because it was a large and active group. “We were there to support and educate the people of the public,” she said, including about areas such as the importance of creating awareness of bee pollination.
She added, “There’s a lot of reasons why we still need an Environmental Committee… I think we had some really involved people who again did not want it to be so formal… I think if we eliminate it the Town is making a mistake.”
Mayor, Heidi Lorenz, supported the staff recommendation because the Town considers climate change in their decisions. “Everything we do is with the environment in mind,” she said.
She added that if the public had an idea they were “passionate about” they could create a working group and approach staff to work in partnership, like Horticultural Group does. “I think those are the partnerships we should be working on.”
“I would rather staff be doing their jobs to cut back and help mitigate and help with climate change by doing what they do everyday,” said Lorenz.
