There were three reports presented to Trent Lakes Council this week dealing with recomendations of the Open Spaces Master Plan (OSMP).
Recreation and Facilities Director Dylan Cosh presented reports on Trail Maintenance Best Practices, Public Washrooms and Trail Design and Construction.
The OSMP made recomendations in all three areas and was approved by council in March 2023. It was created by consulting firm thinc design.
The plan includes 85 recomendations to create a municipal connected open space trail network and identifies potential improvements to parks, trails, beaches and boat launches.
Cosh said staff reviewed a number of trails maintenance documents from other municipalities and organizations and concluded that our current Recreation Maintenance Police aligns well with these documents.
Lynn Thornhill, Kate Keough, Judy, Staszak, Cindy Claus, and Karen Pray all volunteer at the Buckhorn Community Centre during the Festival of Trees. They are all pictured above standing in front of some of the beautiful trees featured during the festival that ended on Dec. 11.
Selwyn Township is applying for a grant to help retrofit old homes for better energy efficiencies.
During the Dec. 12 council meeting, Gaby Kalapos, Executive Director at Clean Air Partnership (CAP) updated council on a possible partnership to allow residents to take advantage of a Home Energy Retrofit Program.
Kalapos told council that this retrofit program would be through the help of CAP, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and Community Efficiency Financing Program (CEF).
She explained that FCM would fund up to 80 per cent of the total program costs with the township being responsible to fund the other 20 per cent.
However, the township is able to put their 20 per cent into repayable loans while FCM would be grant funding for the program. This means that while the township would be creating debt, it is repayable debt that they would recuperate over time.
Township staff recommended entering into a partnership with CAP to apply for this grant and if successful start the retrofit program that would be called Better Homes Selwyn.
The Canada Post strike has impacted many businesses, Trent Lakes staff will work with Peterborough County to investigate creating a bicycle route in Buckhorn.
Staff were responding to a delegation made by the Citizens for Alternative Transportation in Trent Lakes (CATTL) in September regarding Adjacent Road Infrastructure.
In September CATTL representative Karen Shearer told council that limited cycling infrastructure in and around Buckhorn is creating a barrier for individuals to walk and cycle in the hamlet.
Most of the changes they asked for were on county roads, so council asked staff to talk to county staff to find out what Trent Lakes can do on its own and when it needs to work with the county as the roads involved are county roads.
Evan Grieger, Director of Public Works, presented a report to council at this week’s meeting
In the report he said staff do not support some of CATTL’s requests for minor construction improvements for various reasons including high costs, a lack of room, and no infrastructure to accommodate users.
This short documentary is a portrait of a tiny town, Lakefield, Ontario, and its independent weekly, the Herald. Across North America, newspapers are dying, but in Lakefield, Terry McQuitty, the town paper’s publisher, carries on a rich, 150-year-old tradition. Set to the pace of small-town life, Unheralded is a testament to the vital role newspapers can still play, and the close bond between reporter and reader.
