An Innovative Transit system

Mayor John Henderson has been in talks for some time with Port Hope’s Mayor Bob Sanderson and Hamilton Mayor Bill Cane about an integrated Transit system covering all three Towns.  Currently Cobourg operates two systems – regular transit operating two one hour loops and a “Wheels” on-demand service with smaller buses providing service for residents who cannot use regular buses.  Instead of that, Judy Smith proposes using much smaller fully accessible buses to provide on-demand door to door service for everyone.  All rides would be booked and paid for using an app and the usual wait would be no more than half an hour.  Judy is the Climate Change Coordinator for the Town of Cobourg and Environmental Officer for the… Read complete articleAn Innovative Transit system

More Trees in Cobourg

In 2019, Cobourg had a net loss of 75 trees and the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee didn’t think the Town was putting enough money into the budget to replace and add to them.  At their meeting on January 7th, they made a motion that the budget be increased from the $50K proposed to $100K.  Further they wanted an extra $50K for replacement of Emerald Ash trees which are continuing to die off.  Their motion will be presented to the Committee of the Whole Council meeting on January 27 but meanwhile, Budget meetings have been held where the subject was raised by Emily Chorley (she attends the Parks and Rec meetings).  She convinced Council to increase the budget from $50K… Read complete articleMore Trees in Cobourg

Council urged to act on Climate Emergency Declaration

At Monday’s Committee of the Whole Council Meeting, four citizens asked Council to be sure to follow up on their declaration of a Climate Emergency.  Bruce Bellaire represented the Blue Dot group and asked that sufficient budget funds be allocated to an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP), a Green Development Standard (GDS) and for one staff person to be hired to manage these over a two year period.  Richard Tyssen attempted to put dollar estimates on these objectives and also asked for progress on the Tannery Secondary Plan.  Gudron Ludorf – Weaver (Gigi) of Sustainable Cobourg supported these requests and said that “these are not normal circumstances”.  At the forum at the end of the meeting when any citizen can… Read complete articleCouncil urged to act on Climate Emergency Declaration

New Waste Programs Finally Operational

If you live in a house in Cobourg and not certain Condos, you will now be using the new Blue Box, Grey box and Green bin program as well as continuing with garbage bags.  It’s just as well that it does not apply to Condos like the one I live in because we don’t have anywhere to put multiple boxes – friends with a house and connected garage don’t have this problem.  Our garbage gets sorted by recyclable or not then gets taken by a contractor to Lindsay!  (I don’t know what other Condos do).  It seems that Northumberland is moving the work of sorting garbage to the taxpayer instead of it being paid for by taxes.  And some recent… Read complete articleNew Waste Programs Finally Operational

Plan to Preserve Natural Heritage

The County is working on a project to map the County’s Natural Heritage features.  The idea is to identify what should be preserved – things like woodlands, streams, wetlands and grasslands.  It’s called a Natural Heritage System Plan (NHS Plan) because they are all interconnected.  The requirement to have this kind of plan was specified by the Province some time ago.  On Monday December 2,  the second of a series of meetings was held to explain this to the Public and solicit feedback.  As usual, not a lot of people showed up – I counted 15 – and these seemed to be mostly concerned with issues not covered by the plan.  The consultants presenting the details said that they were… Read complete articlePlan to Preserve Natural Heritage