Warwick Township now has a clearer direction of how council should proceed, in terms of community needs, over the next few years. Warwick Council approved the final 2023-2026 Strategic Plan during a meeting held last week.
The plan consists of six key pillars: facilitating economic development, enhancing communications and government relations, improving and sustaining infrastructure, ensuring responsible financial stewardship, and maintaining environmental stewardship.
Mayor Todd Case said the plan, which is mandated by the provincial government, will now act as a guide once the budget process begins in November.
"When we talk about sustaining our infrastructure and improving our infrastructure, those are things that will come up at budget. When we talk about financial stewardship, again that's a budgetary situation," he said. "Then when it comes to environmental stewardship, that's something that we'll work on for the next three years, and a lot of that will have to do with the landfill situation."
"Now that we've started this new EA process with Waste Management, it's very important to myself and council that it's a very transparent process, where people can see where we are every step of the way, and have their opportunity to comment. That again, to our municipality is key, we need to know what people are thinking, and again, that lends itself to the strategic planning exercise we just went through as well."
An action included in the plan was to request Waste Management to present to council bi-annually in an effort to improve stakeholder relations.
Meanwhile, public input was also sought during the development of the strategic plan.
"We did really value their feedback and it gives us sort of our marching orders for the next three years," Case said.
StrategyCorp was awarded a contract in March to put together the Strategic Plan at a cost of $19,900. In May, council opted to include additional public consultation opportunities at an additional cost of $6,000. The total cost to develop the Strategic Plan was less than the $30,000 set aside for the project in the 2023 budget.
The final Strategic Plan can be found by clicking here.