april_2018

144 145 cil for rezoning. And a major grocery store is making its way through our planning department, so there’s a lot of activity. “Our Oldcastle industrial park is doing extreme- ly well. Also, last year we had at least a dozen new smaller retail stores open and we suspect that will continue, as the condo developments will drive further commercial business. And we’re adding an incentive to kick-start greenfield com- mercial development - basically, a one-year mor- atorium on development fees, in particular the building permit phase. That, in itself, could save a fair amount of money for potential developers.” Racicot: “Last year we announced our Commu- nity Improvement Plan had reached $250,000 in grants for businesses, which is a significant in- vestment for this town. It really stimulated de- velopment and brought in new businesses.We’re right next door to Windsor, and a healthy vege- tarian restaurant that began there opened a new location here in Tecumseh. That spurred a yoga studio to open beside them. Those investments have really helped the core area, and the town is now moving ahead with streetscaping.We’re really looking forward to that this year.” BVM: Tecumseh has suffered major flood events, how is your storm management system coping? McNamara: “We’ve done significant infrastruc- ture improvements, going back to the very first ‘once-in-one-hundred-years storm’ in July 2011, where we’ve invested close to $30 million in the municipality with new pumping stations.We now have emergency power backup to all our storm and sanitary pumping stations.We added a huge channel in Lakewood Park, as well as a deep san- itary sewer storage facility with a new pumping station. Just recently we put a $3.4 million invest- ment into our sanitary sewer system.We did re- TECUMSEH, ONTARIO ceive a grant from the provincial government and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Green Municipal Fund to take inventory of all our san- itary and storm sewers to see if repairs need to be done. Preliminary reports are that sewers are in good shape, but work is required in residential areas, the private side, where disconnection from downspouts is critical and some illegal connec- tions to the system need to be vetted. “Our public works department is working dili- gently, and we are continuing our grant program on back-flow preventers and putting in sump pits and disconnections. Last year, we were over- subscribed– close to 600 residents applied for grants. It’s paying off because in the September 2016 flood events, close to 20 percent of resi- dents were affected in Wards One and Two. In the August 2017 event, that number dropped to 145 homes vs. 2000. Less than 45 with sanitary sewer backup.” BVM: What’s happening with sustainable/green initiatives? McNamara: “We’re into year three since our streetlight conversion to LED. Our arena has 2400 solar panels on the roof; when we did it almost a decade ago it was the largest rooftop solar proj- ect in Canada. Since then, it’s been performing extremely well, producing 500 kilowatts of pow- er and income for the municipality. We’ve now partnered with Essex Power to look at Electric Charging stations for electric vehicles.We applied for a grant with three other municipality partners –La Salle, Amherstburg, and Leamington– for a $10 million project creating what we call ‘virtual