There’s no move to change to the previous fixed route system but at the recent Council meeting, Councillor Adam Bureau pushed strongly to have a hybrid transit system – at least until enough buses could be deployed. Adam said that currently there are 2 buses when there should be 5 (see below for more detail) and that as an interim measure, one bus should operate on a fixed route with two continuing with on-demand service. Other councillors were not convinced and pointed to a number of problems. Funding for the extra bus would come out of reserves intended to pay for new buses but Deputy Mayor Nicole Beatty said that this would go against Council’s goal of setting aside money… Read complete articleCouncil Debates Transit Hybrid Fixed Route

Changes to the Parking by-law caused considerable debate at both the Committee of the Whole meeting on May 15 and the Regular Council meeting on May 23.  Two items were hotly debated: First: The general time limit for Parking on a street – it was proposed to change this from the current 48 hours to 3 hours. Second: Instead of simply banning parking in front of a driveway, it was proposed to require a 2 metre spacing. There were also a number of other changes involving items that had been previously approved by Council such as Waterfront Parking but there was no further debate on those. Brent Larmer said that the 48 hour limit on street parking was not enforceable and… Read complete articleNew Parking By-Law

In November 2020, KPMG delivered a report to Council outlining what residents thought of the services provided by the Town.  Then in October 2022, with Provincial funding, the Town hired Customer Service Professionals Network (CSPN) to take it further and create a “Customer Service Strategy & Implementation Plan”.  They started with another public survey. KPMG’s survey had managed to get 307 responses and CSPN’s got 110. (Another one by the Town got 219, in all cases, not many!). CSPN also surveyed employees, councillors and four public focus-groups. At the Committee of the whole meeting on Monday (15 May, 2023), Shawn Ashley of CSPN presented their report to Council and provided a summary.  The report is in Resources below. A copy of… Read complete articleUpdate on Customer Service Plan

The Town’s web site is getting quite bad.  There’s no acknowledgement by the Town but on Friday May 12, major sections of the web site were missing – both the Contact page and the News Centre were down.  Instead, there were announcements on Facebook – that’s pathetic and missing major segments of Cobourg’s population.  One such announcement was that “there will be a Special Closed session Council Meeting on Monday, May 15, at 1:00 pm for an Equity Diversity and Inclusion training session.”  That’s perhaps in response to a motion by Adam Bureau in late April that the Council receive “Harm reduction” training.  Apart from missing pages, other pages are long out of date – e.g. the Heritage page still… Read complete articleTown’s Web site and Communication Failing

Council is planning a different way to create the 2022 – 2026 Strategic Plan.  The previous plan was done by Councillors in an open session and guided by a facilitator, Carolyn Kearns. The 1½ day session in February 2019, ended up with a draft that was then opened up for public comment – and there was plenty of that.  The current budget includes $20K for preparation of the plan although Deputy Mayor Nicole Beatty wanted to save this by having staff do the work.  Mayor Lucas Cleveland said that $20K was too little. Others disagreed and the budget ended up with $20K included.  Apparently lost in the debate was the choice of how to create a Strategic Plan. It seems that it… Read complete articleStrategic Plan for 2022-2026