Chatham-Kent council is hoping to make it easier for groups across the municipality to make their communities a little more eye-catching.
Ward 1 Councillor Melissa Harrigan put forward a successful motion during Monday night's meeting to have municipal administration prepare a report that identifies the current levels of support that are provided towards beautification initiatives in communities for things such as hanging flower baskets, installing holiday lights and decorative flag hanging.
Municipal staff in Chatham-Kent will consult local community BIAs and horticultural societies while working on the report and then recommend policies and processes that will improve the scheduling and equalize the service levels across Chatham-Kent when it comes to festive decorating. The report will also look at the financial implications of the recommendations.
Harrigan said she got the idea for the motion when she heard from a group in her ward who said, after changing leadership, they struggled with how to organize hanging flower baskets across the community. According to Harrigan, a significant amount of staff and volunteer time was spent trying to help them facilitate the process.
"It exposed something to me that may be well known or less known across CK, but really, depending on the community you live in, these beautification initiatives could be very easy to organize or very challenging to organize," she said.
Harrigan said she hopes the report will examine ways that the municipality can make it easier and provide more support for community groups who are looking to decorate seasonally.
"It really just asks for... some consultation and a public conversation to summarize very clearly what CK can provide support to so that these community groups know what they have to do, how much advanced they have to provide and when they have to provide funds, if necessary, to pay for staff time to support or not support their initiatives," Harrigan explained.
There was some discussion at Monday's council meeting over how the report would find a way to equalize the service between communities that vary so drastically in size. However, Chief Administrative Officer Don Shropshire explained it would be more of a baseline report, to give communities a clearer explanation of costs associated with certain beautification services such as having Christmas lights hung up.
The motion passed unanimously, with many councillors praising the idea and sharing their own experience of trying to help their wards in the beautification process. For Councillor Trevor Thompson, working to get Christmas lights up in Erieau has been a challenge for the last few years.
"I think figuring out what the level of service is going to be and what the balance is going to be is really going to help communities like Erieau that have seemed to be working uphill to be trying to get, at the very least, what other small communities have as well," he said.
