Belleville council working on strategy for the city

Belleville city council may be shifting its attention from city centre to other areas of the city following Monday’s strategy session at the Quinte Sports and Wellness Centre.

Mayor Mitch Panciuk told the session the time has come to stop talking about the city centre revitalization.

Panciuk tells Quinte News, “I think what we’re talking about is shifting the focus that used to be focused on only the downtown to looking at

citywide issues. Downtown is important, but as we go forward, not perhaps in the same way as we did with the Build Belleville program.”

Panciuk said, “Take out the word centre and call it city revitalization because many people are saying, what about our area? ”

The mayor commented on the city’s environment strategy.

“As we look at improving our city quality, part of the quality of life is environment. We only have one, we’re all living with it. The city is going to continue to move in a direction where we reduce our carbon footprint, where we are more efficient in using materials and that we’re more strategic as it comes to using energy and those are things that can have a role on pure environment. But at the same time we have to look at the reality of today, flood mitigation, you know from climate change, and those other things are important for us and I think that having that be part of our city development strategy overall, our sustainability I think was the word that was used, fits together.”

From left, Belleville Councillors Sean Kelly and Ryan Williams, and CAO Rick Kester, at strategy meeting, June 17, 2019 (Photo: Mary Thomas/Quinte News)

During a discusion on inclusiveness, Councillor Sean Kelly pointed to a city booklet, saying that the people in the book are 99% white.

Councillor Ryan Williams said city council should look to broad areas of the city when it comes to revitalization, for example, the waterfront and Thurlow Ward.

Panciuk said the strategic planning document will be made available to the public.

The two hour session covered a long list of strategic areas including infrastructure, tourism and residential development, transportation and mobility, and industrial and commercial development, city centre revitalization, cultural redevelopment community health safety and security, and entertainment, making a number of changes along the way.

In an interview with Quinte News, CAO Rick Kester says the strategy session is very important for the staff.

Staff will bring back a business plan to city council probably in September with a final approval by council at the end of 2019.