Clarence Rockland

of onemajor city (Rockland) which is home to half the population of about 24,500.The other half is spread over five villages.Themajorityof residents are bilin- gual,andmost municipal services operate in both French and English. “We’re a good town,”says Desjardins.“We’ve got a lot of mix fromurban to agriculture.Within fivemin- utes you can be out into a farmarea.Fifteenminutes from themain part of Rockland is 10,000 hectares of forest,bush,trails that is partly in our municipalityand partly in another municipalityowned by the County.It’s another jewel,perfect for walking,snowshoeing,and cross-country skiing.We have one forest near Bouget that is also owned byour municipalityandwemain- tain that for activities in all seasons.” Clarence-Rockland has 200 km.of roads under its CLARENCE-ROCKLAND, ONTARIO care.WhenMayor Desjardins was first campaigning, he heardmanycomplaints about the infrastructure, so he and his teamdeveloped a strategicplan of sorts. He explains,“We asked the peoplewhat the level of importancewas andwhat the level of satisfactionwas for manyof our services.When it came to street repairs, the importancewas 97percent,but the satisfaction was only27percent.So,we’ve beenworking on that for the last fewyears and people are saying they’ve never seen somuchworkdone on our roads.They were in poor condition.” Snowremoval,fire,police,garbage collection all have a good record,but theMayor and his teamkeep working for even better results.They’re planning on building two fire stations this year-one in Rockland and another in Bourget,where ambulances will also