KENILWORTH – Council is ready for policy to better deal with traffic and pedestrian control requests from the public.
Council received the policy report from staff on July 22.
The report recommended staff be directed to draft a policy to be passed at a future meeting of council.
Mayor Andy Lennox thanked staff for creating a document “to allow council to thoughtfully navigate the process.”
He added the steps proposed are completely appropriate.
“We’ll run a couple of requests through this to see how it turns out.”
CAO Mike Givens noted director of operations Matt Aston spent considerable time working on the policy.
“We did meet with representatives from the OPP to make certain we were not committing to anything we could not do,” he said adding the OPP agreed that these issues are challenging when they come to council.
Givens noted that staff deals with a number of these requests and having a formal process in place is useful.
A draft policy presented to council that night was generated by staff after a review of similar policies in neighbouring municipalities as well as giving due consideration to the unique circumstances in Wellington North.
It sets up a formal process when a request is made by a township resident or business owner for additional traffic or pedestrian control measures within the township’s transportation network.
Deputations to council for pedestrian or traffic concerns will not be encouraged/allowed until they have followed the process outlined within this policy.
This will ensure that at the deputation, council has full information available for them to make an informed decision.
Councillor Dan Yake said if the request is submitted, would it be staff making a decision.
Aston explained the request would allow staff to generate information such as traffic counts or generate speed data to better determine what traffic control measures are warranted.
Yake then asked whether delegations would not be encouraged until the process was followed.
“But ultimately when people are not happy, they are going to end up here (at council),” Yake said.
Lennox said much of the policy allows information to be generated ahead of time so council is not blindsided.
Yake agreed this was a good process to start and offers consistency.
A policy is expected back for discussion at council in August after which staff would prepare an authorizing bylaw.
