Pam Mood was keynote speaker at the Federation of Prince Edward Island Municipalities’ 60th annual meeting at the Rodd Charlottetown Hotel on Monday.
Representatives from communities all over P.E.I. came together to discuss how to improve their communities.
Mood, who has been mayor of Yarmouth since 2012, centred her speech on the theme of community engagement, which at its best, she said, “can be so much fun if you’re not afraid of it.”
Community engagement, says Mood, is when a town’s mayor directly connects with and talks to his or her citizens to help determine what needs to be done.
She gave some examples from her own community.
“Every month in the summer, we let the people close down Main Street,” she said, noting it allows people to use the space to engage.
On one instance, Mood says, she allowed Main Street to be closed for a car show.
“We had over 20,000 people on our Main Street, and we’re only a town of 6,700.”
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Mood says that the best part about mayors getting engaged with their communities is that the community will become empowered.
“It’s their community,” she explained. “Once the people become empowered, we just have to do our part.”
She tells of how, after engaging with the community for some time, she saw members of the public working hard to clean the city, without any involvement from town hall.
Mood has made presentations all across Atlantic Canada through her business, Mood Coaching and Consulting.
P.E.I. Premier Wade MacLauchlan also spoke during the event. He told participants that population was the No. 1 issue for small communities in P.E.I.
“There’s no point building schools and keeping them open,” he said, “if there are no young people who want to be in those classrooms.”
Ultimately, MacLauchlan said the issue of population is “always the hardest to solve,” but he agreed with Mood that the solution was in community engagement.