Bradford Mayor James Leduc is hoping to spend more time with his grandchildren.
Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin is trying to tame her inbox.
South Simcoe Police Service Chief John Van Dyke wants to continue modernizing the service.
These three local leaders shared with BradfordToday their resolutions for 2024 — both professional and some personal.
Bradford Mayor James Leduc
“My New Year’s resolution as the mayor of Bradford West Gwillimbury is to continue to work collaboratively with my council colleagues to build on the success of the past year. I would like to continue with the strategic priorities council laid out early in 2023 for the four-year term,” Leduc said via email.
Those five priorities include: community safety/traffic congestion, infrastructure/major access roads, economic development, downtown revitalization, recreation and leisure facilities/services.
“From these priorities we were able to build six Advisory Committees all of which have been working hard with many great accomplishments already in 2023. We are all looking forward to the work that will come from the committees in 2024; these are exciting times,” Leduc said.
He is also looking forward to the completion of certain projects in 2024, including the youth centre at Lions Park, the community and social services hub at 177 Church St., and the County of Simcoe’s 50-unit affordable housing project at 125 Simcoe Rd.
The mayor is also hoping the province will fully fund and continue to move ahead with work on the Highway 400-404 Link (Bradford Bypass), which he expects will help serve many residents, not just from Bradford, but also from the surrounding areas in Simcoe County and York Region.
“On a personal note, I hope to continue to find happiness and love with family and friends and maybe lose of a couple of pounds of weight along the way. Making more time with my grandkids would also be something I would like to accomplish this year, just to keep me youthful,” he said. “I want to wish everyone good health and happiness in the new year.”
Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin
“We’re moving the yard stick forward on the strategic plan that council adopted at the end of last year,” Dollin said noting the four pillars of grow, connect, sustain and serve.
In terms of growth, Innisfil not only met their housing target from the province of 462 new home starts in 2023, but exceeded it by 51 per cent with 697 new starts.
While Dollin was happy for that progress, she also noted the importance of growing in a sustainable way to give residents the infrastructure they need.
“Critical infrastructure isn’t just water and sewers; critical infrastructure is hockey rinks and parks and libraries and all the other things that make the quality of life in a community good,” she said.
When it comes to connecting, Dollin is trying to attend as many community events as she can and work closely with council and staff to make sure “our ears are always open to residents.”
That goes hand-in-hand with serving the community, by quickly and efficiently reacting to residents and fulfilling the work of council.
It’s a lot to fit into one resolution.
“That’s the big one; it’s the entire strategic plan,” Dollin said. “Overall, my goal is have that big picture look and just move that forward.”
Like most people, Dollin is no stranger to junk mail, but she plans to clear out as much as possible and respond faster to the 50 to 60 important emails demanding her attention each day.
“One of my personal objectives is to try to make sure I try to get my inbox opened at the end of the day and make sure everything’s been addressed,” she said.
With so much on the go, another personal goal of hers it to avoid burn out, and Dollin praised “a great council,” who are “always willing to help out.”
That doesn’t mean she’s taking it easy, though, as 2024 actually marks an election year for Dollin at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) where her two-year term as the chair of the Small Urban Caucus is up and she is seeking re-election.
Votes will be cast by elected municipal officials from across the province during the annual conference in Ottawa Aug. 18 to 21, and as past president from 2016 to 2018 and a board member since 2011, Dollin hopes she’ll have good name recognition, but knows “you can’t rest on your laurels.”
South Simcoe Police Service Chief John Van Dyke
The chief provided a concise list of five resolutions for 2024, reflecting the important tasks facing him and the rest of the service.
- To ensure the safety and well-being of our service members and our communities.
- Continue the modernization of the service, which will include the implementation of online reporting and addressing the need for additional workspace as our service grows.
- To continue to recruit high quality candidates to our service.
- Continue to engage with our communities and enhance relationships with our community partners.
- Continue to grow the service as our communities grow to meet the demands of that growth.
Those goals were largely supported by the chief’s recent presentation on the service’s 2024 budget during the Dec. 5 meeting of Bradford council.
At the time, Van Dyke explained the importance of an additional $960,176 in salaries to the operating budget, mostly for hiring eight new constables to help overcome the lack of staff, which has led to an overtime deficit of about $150,000, as the service deals with increasing calls coupled with rising crime severity.
“In 2018 our crime severity index was 22.20 and over the last five or six years it has risen to 38 and is obviously trending in an upwards direction as we grow,” the chief said during the meeting.
While the service is currently authorized for 104 officer positions, about 46 of those have turned over since 2019 due to retirements, resignations or deaths.
Even when at full staff, those 104 officers cover a combined population of about 92,000 people in Bradford and Innisfil, based on data from Statistics Canada, and the chief explained that means the service currently only has 113 officers per 100,000 population compared to the provincial average of 176 and the national average of 183.
In addition to more officers, the budget also proposed three new civilian positions, including one person dedicated to writing applications for grants and funding to help reduce the cost of the service to the municipalities. The other two civilian positions include one additional Crown brief clerk for a total of three people to help file reports and free up time for officers to spend on patrol as well as one person to oversee the service’s new online reporting tool.
