Re-elected Ward 2 City Councillor Susan Myers plans to get to work immediately.
“First, I want to thank the residents of ward 2 for returning me to the Council table” says Myers.
During the recent candidate forums, Myers raised the issue of asking the community to prioritize what is important to them in order to assist Council to review City Services for the 2015 budget.
“I plan to bring forward a resolution to City Council which would direct staff to create an on line survey designed to ask Saultites to prioritize City Services currently provided and paid for with municipal taxes”.
Myers says “there is always a lot of talk at election time about lowering costs – by every candidate, including incumbents. One part of achieving lower taxes is to increase revenue through assessment and community growth but another is to reduce the cost of operating the city which means looking at the services provided”.
Myers would like to see not only a survey of the residents of Sault Ste. Marie ranking the services currently provided through municipal taxes but a comment section in the survey to illicit input with ideas the people of Sault Ste. Marie may have to improve what we do now and to identify any cost saving suggestions that the public may know of that we have not considered in the past.
“Sometimes we are too close to it” she says. “Often people have visited another jurisdiction in Ontario or Canada or even another country and have observed some method of carrying out a service that we are unaware of in Sault Ste. Marie. I am looking for new and innovative suggestions that can be considered in our operation in Sault Ste. Marie”.
“Once this information is gathered, I will be asking staff for a report back to Council with the results and propose that Council goes into a meeting of the whole Chaired by the Mayor to fully discuss the results. The outcome I am looking for is improvement to our current operations not based upon my opinion or that of the staff but based upon solid findings through feedback from all the taxpayers of our community” states Myers.
