LAKE OF BAYS - Spurred on by the idea Lake of Bays can better serve its residents and businesses the township has created two surveys to receive feedback from the community.
Earlier this year, Lake of Bays hired an economic development intern, Adam Dyment, to meet with residents and businesses to gather their input on how to improve economic development in the community; the resident and business surveys are apart of that research.
Dyment was hired through funding provided by FedNor, a federal program for northern Ontario to help communities and their businesses grow.
Through the initiative a core group of business owners, council members and township staff has been established to act as an overview group that will consider recommendations before presenting a final report to council. But, Dyment said the community’s suggestions are key to the process.
“It is the community who is going to help drive this initiative and we really need their help,” he said. “We are taking these surveys seriously and it’s not putting out a survey just to put out a survey.”
Dyment said the group had some general ideas on what the end goals would be going into the project, but that the final recommendations will come from survey feedback.
The surveys will also help narrow down the top recommendations, as opposed to bombarding council with too many suggestions that won’t come to fruition.
“We don’t want to have 25 different recommendations because with too many recommendations you’re not going to get anything accomplished,” said Dyment. “We want to try to choose three main things and actually get them accomplished. We want to have tangible benefits instead of recommendations that don’t move forward.”
Currently the resident survey is available on the township’s website, with the business survey to be launched in October. The resident survey will be online until about the end of October. Both surveys take about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.
“This really allows people the chance to have their voice heard and to have a say in what the township does in terms of economic development moving forward,” said Dyment.
“We had some general ideas on what our end goals were going into this, but we really want these surveys to be the drivers of what we suggest to council.”