Tecumseh

PREFERRED VENDORS n The Job Shoppe www.thejobshoppe.com The Job Shoppe specializes in temporary staffing and permanent placement for specific industry sectors. A key factor that differentiates the company from others is its unique team structure. Each team consists of two consultants who are responsible for both client service and candidate selection, ensuring that one is always available to both clients and candidates. To date, the Job Shoppe has filled 12,257 positions for 564 clients. n Essex Energy Corp. www.essexenergy.ca TECUMSEH, ONTARIO megawatt savings.’We’re also looking at a mini-grid system for our proposed Sportsplex, where we’ll introduce four megawatts of battery storage and more panels.We could be producing all our power and storing it through solar.” Racicot: “At our first Earth Day celebration last year, we introduced a natural- ized area in Lakewood Park and invited citizens to come out and plant trees.We continue to build on that. This year, we’ll be encouraging residents to do more recycling, in anticipation of the province’s waste diversion legislation restricting the amount of waste to the landfill. “Bonduelle (a large food packaging company located here) is looking at ways to reduce their environmental footprint, so we’re helping them out with infor- mation on grant funding. They’ve already developed two ways of reducing their organic waste: 1) sending it to a bio-digester owned by a local farmer, and 2) incorporating a wastewater management system.We encourage residents and businesses to think green and if we can help, we’ll do so.” BVM: How would you sum up Tecumseh’s success in town management? McNamara: “In a word: sustainability. That means a lot of things –fiscal sus- tainability of the community and quality of life opportunities are extremely important.We have aimed to have as much greenspace as possible for our resi- dents with diverse aspects like naturalized, with trails or without, some with amenities and with- out, and now have more than 40 parks in Town with our biggest green space area a total of 140 acres.We’re developing trail systems throughout Tecumseh to connect those parks and connect us to our neighbors. The Sportsplex we’re look- ing to build will be a regional facility, but it also involves a lot of our stakeholders and partners. We’re proud that it’s a public/private partnership, with school boards, our cardiac rehabilitation center, Hôtel Dieu Grace Healthcare, as well as other public entities. That’s how you build sus- tainable communities. “We’ve done our piece on asset management, we have a mature life-cycling plan on existing assets.We’re already putting dollars aside for new assets that aren’t even here yet. That creates stability for future taxes and gives certainty to our business community in terms of their costs moving forward.”