MORRISBURG – Last year when The Leader sat down with the mayor for the annual year end interview, Jason Broad was just 30 days into office. At that time he said he “loved every minute” of those first 30 days. And now, a year further into his first term as South Dundas mayor, Broad says, “I’m still loving every minute of it.”
That’s not to say the year hasn’t had its share of challenges, he simply relishes the opportunity to work through those challenges.
For the mayor, looking back at 2023 many of his highlights revolve around the goings on in the community. New businesses choosing to open their doors in South Dundas and being part of those celebrations rate high on his list along with seeing and supporting all of the varied community events organized by all of the different organizations, service clubs and individuals who take it upon themselves to make South Dundas a great community.
New developments in the planning stages through 2023 include the Morris Glen Court expansion, proposed Valecraft Homes housing development, and Safavieh distribution centre.
“We have site plans for Morris Glen Court,” said Broad. “Obviously we’d like that to move ahead faster but things are in progress. Also with Valecraft Homes and Safavieh – they are all in the works, hopefully 2024 will see action.”
Looking forward, Broad says that the municipality has created a land inventory map of both public and private lands available for sale to show what’s available here. He foresees making that public soon and hopes it will help developers find what they are looking for.
A year into office, Broad says he now has a greater understanding of municipal staffing.
For various reasons South Dundas found itself hiring a new CAO, clerk, treasurer, deputy chief building official, and acting director of Fire and Emergency Services all within the calendar year.
On top of that, “we had to make a change in communications and economic development,” said Broad. “Necessary changes,” he added. “We needed to have our house in order and I feel like we’ve made changes to move in that direction.”
“We will look at the changes as part of the budget process,” said Broad. “For now we are looking after these things internally because we have significant challenges in our budget.”
“We’re getting the house in order and attitude and culture is still important,” said Broad. “It’s been good that we’re moving forward with that work.”
A key document Broad says will become public in the near future is the strategic plan.
Meant to be a guiding document, Broad knows that it is overdue, but explains the hurdles they’ve faced in getting that document ready for the public.
“Our intention was to get it done at the six month mark of our term as a new council,” said Broad. But, at that point, they were in the process of hiring new senior staffers, who then needed time to get organized. Once ready, consultant Gary Gzik was hired to lead council and staff through the process, which was completed but Gzik died before the document was finalized. “We’re so sad that that happened. Gary made a huge impression with the team,” said Broad.
“It wasn’t our intention to take this long and I’m not making excuses. I’m just calling out the scenario,” said Broad, adding that the council will hold an open committee of the whole session within the first quarter of this year to finalize the strategic plan. “It’s going to come,” said Broad.
He sees the committees of council working well within their updated frameworks. He added that the recreation and youth committees will get started in 2024.
“We’ve spent a lot of time internally and we have to continue to focus on that but we have to turn our focus more to the level where we can make a greater impact,” said Broad referring to the counties and provincial partnership opportunities.
That being said, council’s most immediate challenge will be the budget process which has been ongoing for the past two months at the staff level but will arrive at the council table next week.
This being their second budget, Broad said that he has definitely learned a lot since last year.
“Now we’ve been in office for a year, we have the experience to understand more what all of these line items mean and represent in the level of service,” said Broad. “This year we can look more at where we can help save money, or spend money differently. The treasury understands how important it is not to just pass everything on to the taxpayer and the directors and managers know how important managing their budgets are, which is part of the attitude and culture that we’ve been working on.”
Broad said that the starting point for deliberations will be a draft proposal increase of less than 10 per cent with clear options to make the increase smaller.
“I can’t see us being low in 2024’s budget,” said Broad. “I can’t see us returning to the previous levels of one to two to three per cent. I just can’t see it at this point. But, we will go through the budget process as a team and that’s where we will make the final decisions.”
In his role at SDG Counties council he is part of two committees, Glen Stor Dun Lodge, which he chairs and the SDG Library board. Regarding the report in 2023 which suggested a number of library branch closures, Broad was clear about his stance. “I am not voting to close any library during my term,” he said.
Broad acknowledges that the South Dundas council team has a lot of work ahead of them with budget, landfill, ROMA delegations, and strategic plan meetings all needing to take place early this year.
Broad told The Leader that the night he was elected mayor then mayor Steven Byvelds shook Broad’s hand, and said: “Congratulations. You have a big job ahead of you.”
“That was all he said,” said Broad. Since then, learning all that the job entails, Broad said: “He was right. This is multiple times more than I ever expected.”
On a personal note, he added that it is the support of his family and his supportive work family at Ross that make it possible to do all that the mayor’s role entails and to lead this community that he cares so deeply about.
