Stratford town council has new committee's and departments following an announcement Wednesday by Mayor David Dunphy.
"We are very fortunate to have council members with extensive and diverse municipal and professional experience and I selected them for the new town committees to take maximum advantage of their skills and knowledge," said Dunpy at the end of the January council meeting.
Leading the change will be the newly created Accountability and Engagement Committee. Councillor Diane Griffin will be the new chair.
Dunphy said the town is working on a project called Results Matter.
"We have established goals about what we want to accomplish and we want to measure those goals," he said. "(For example) We want to achieve a certain level of employment in the town so we want to measure those kinds of things."
The new accountability and engagement committee will monitor that.
"We want to improve our engagement to our residents and one way is the Buy Local campaign, so we are setting up a citizen's reference panel of 25 people, approximately, to meet for eight or nine sessions to discuss ways to improve buying local.," said Dunphy.
"That is all part of the engagement piece, whether it is the web site or Twitter, social media, that sort of thing. We want to give feedback to residents and receive feedback as well.
"Because we believe it is so important, we wanted to create a separate committee to oversee it and to make sure that we are doing what we say we are going to do," said Dunphy.
The new committees are as follows, with the name of the chair, followed by the name of the vice-chair:
Accountability and Engagement - Diane Griffin, Emile Gallant;
Sustainability - David Dunphy, Diane Griffin;
Recreation, Culture, and Events - Steve MacDonald, Diane Griffin;
Safety Services - Steve Ogden, Steve MacDonald;
Planning, Development and Heritage - Gary Clow, Steve Ogden;
Infrastructure - Emile Gallant, Randy Cooper;
Finance and Technology - Randy Cooper, Gary Clow;
Human Resources - Gary Clow, Randy Cooper.
Infrastructure will combine the former public works committee with utilities that looked after sewer and water.
Cooper remains at the helm of finance in this new structure but gets additional responsibility for technology issues.
Councillor Gary Clow also remains in his same post as chair of human resources plus planning but gets additional responsibility for development and heritage.
Matching committee changes will be changes in the name and structure of the town's departments.
