Belleville, Ontario

7 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 BELLEV I LLE , ONTAR IO made the city more attractive for new residents who are leaving larger cities for the natural amenities and quality of life that Belleville has always enjoyed. He reports, “Residents and businesses are seeing what I’ve known all along. As people’s thoughts are occupied by COVID-19 there is an underlying sense of confidence and excitement about our future. We’ve taken this opportunity to focus on what’s important, which is to provide the services our residents and businesses rely on, and to make the investments that we need to have a better and brighter future. While we are apprehensive about the public health emergency that the whole world is going through, we see that once we come out of this, our community and our economy will take off like a rocket ship and have continuous strong performance.” The beautiful, historic city is located at the mouth of the Moira River on the Bay of Quinte near the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. The province’s largest highway, the 401, runs right through Belleville, giving residents easy access to larger cities like Kingston, which is about a half hour’s drive to the east, and Toronto about two hours to the west. Belleville’s population is just over 55,000 and Maclean’s Magazine ranked it the fourth best city in Canada to live in, due in part to high quality internet service, access to medical care, and low property taxes. Panciuk acknowledges, “The recognition is nice. We have a really bright future. People want to come to Belleville… when Maclean’s ranks us the fourth best place in the entire country in which to live, that really generates a lot of interest by