The South Marysburgh Mirror COUNCIL CORNER John Hirsch, Councillor Ward 9, South Marysburgh Isn’t it wonderful that Barbara McConnell has agreed to publish The Mirror - the only Ward newspaper in the County. The Mirror has always been such a good communication tool and over the last year of the pandemic, we have all realized how very important communication is. In the year or so that we have lived without The Mirror, much has happened to shut down normal life — the Covid- 19 pandemic, of course. Early on in the pandemic, our Mayor, Steve Ferguson, suggested to Councillors that we canvas our residents to try to find out what they needed, what their concerns were, etc. Doing that, | discovered that one of the greatest needs was accurate, unbiased and timely information about the pandemic, case numbers, restrictions, best practices for safety and what was and was not possible to do. So, | started sending a daily email to everyone on my County email list. That was about 35 names a year ago. Since then, expanding mostly by word of mouth, my daily email reaches 190 email addresses and some of those good folks pass it on to their networks. My email each day reports the latest case counts from our health region and Kingston, hospitalization numbers, etc. | also curate the news and include links to articles about the latest vaccine information, case numbers around Ontario and the world. | also include links to regional and provincial health official sites as well as notices from the County about all manner of subjects. Many of you reading this are probably on my list — but you are not, just drop me an email at: jhirsch@pecounty.on.ca and | will be happy to add you to the list. Council Activity fell, after a few weeks of shutdown in the early days of the pandemic, our new CAO Marcia Wallace asked Council what we wanted to do? Some municipalities virtually shut down their Councils (Quinte West, for example). | and most of Council enthusiastically responded — let’s go full speed ahead. There is a lot of work to do! So, we have adapted to almost all meetings being held virtually, using the Zoom platform. This has its but one advantage is that residents can appear and make deputations and comments to Council from the comfort of their homes — not having to drive to Picton and sit on the hard benches at Shire Hall! So, Council has pursued a lot of initiatives that were on our to do list: e We have a new Official Plan, approved on February 24, and now being reviewed by the Province before it takes effect. We have a new information gathering website called — Have Your Say — where you can read about and submit your views on upcoming projects and public consultation opportunities. Current items on the site include: building permit fees, cannabis production rules, tourism management plan, noise bylaw, Wellington development charges, and more. « We have developed a series (not quite finished yet) of measures to deal with the excessive day tripping tourism that afflicted the County last summer. « We have a new Director of Operations, Adam Goheen, and he is doing a great job responding to the never-ending issue around road construction, repairs and snow removal. We finally put in place a new tree management policy for municipal properties. We resoundingly said no to the Picton Terminals application to allow container ships and cruise ships in Picton harbor. LOCAL EVENTS The South Marysburgh Recreation Board has adapted to put on fun events in the Covid era. Safe visits with Santa and the Easter bunny were great successes. Congratulations to the whole Board for thinking outside the box!! I can be reached by phone, text and email. www. jghirsch.com jhirsch@pecounty.on.ca 613-846-0046 And don’t forget, for immediate service the County help line is available: 613-476-2148 ext. 1023 Email: info@pecounty.on.ca Or submit a request using the online form on the County website: www.thecounty.ca Bylaw complaints: bylaw@pecounty.on.ca