Back to basics

City councillors say Thunder Bay’s new strategic plan should focus more on the city’s basic needs instead of big projects.

Council plans to discuss the city’s strategic plan during an upcoming meeting Monday night. McKellar Coun. Paul Pugh said he wanted to move away from big budgeted projects and instead look at issues such as road repairs and maintaining city services.

"I’m mostly concerned about focusing on the basics," Pugh said during an interview with tbnewswatch.com Saturday. "It seems to be that in the last term there was a lot of emphasis on big projects. There were some big glitzy projects, some of them are necessary, but I would prefer more emphasis on what you would call bread and butter issues."

He added poverty, substance abuse, economic diversification and job creation should also be a main focus for the plan.

Neebing Coun. Linda Rydholm agreed that council should take a closer look at what the city considers basic needs. She added she wasn’t happy with how the strategic plan had gone so far and would have preferred the money from both the federal and provincial governments for the waterfront development to have gone toward other projects.

"I want to see more money in roads," Rydholm said. "You might not think it is important but guess what, it is to people. We have not increased the money the way it should be so we will see what happens."

Another area for improvement would be the city’s waterline. Rydholm said some residents have lines that are leaking lead and that needs to change.

Current River Coun. Andrew Foulds said he the plan should focus more on economic development and try to provide Thunder Bay with better employment opportunities.

"The number one issue facing Thunder Bay is economic development," Foulds said. "I think our strategic plan has to be very strong in that area. It can’t just be about jobs, it has to be good paying jobs. I think we have done a good job in diversifying in the knowledge and resource based sectors."

Foulds said the biggest strength of Thunder Bay is its resiliency and council is doing well in moving the city forward.

He added he would have also liked to see a strategy to deal with youth related issues.