Waterloo aims for stronger neighbourhoods
Council plan would encourage volunteering
WATERLOO — Waterloo has a new plan to promote neighbourhood spirit.
The city wants to hire another permanent staffer to help oversee the effort. By 2023 Waterloo could be spending another $249,000 annually to promote neighbourhoods, plus $110,000 in one-time expenses for items such as new equipment.
It will be up to the next council, to be elected Oct. 22, to approve most new spending. But today’s council has voted to kick-start some efforts.
“This is a strategy whose time has come,” Coun. Jeff Henry said.
The plan endorsed this week aims to encourage public interactions, empower neighbours to lead, and build city policies that support neighbourhood-led initiatives.
It’s meant to encourage volunteering and foster a stronger sense of community, and it aims to ease the red tape that sometimes frustrates neighbourhood celebrations.
“Volunteers are priceless,” said longtime Eastbridge neighbourhood volunteer Cindy Watkin, who helped draft the new plan.
But it’s a challenge to find and keep volunteers, and she hopes the new plan will help.
“Slowly we get more people, but it’s not easy,” Watkin added.
Former councillor Jan d’Ailly worries the plan to promote neighbourhoods isn’t properly connected to a different plan to promote parks, which he sees as neighbourhood centrepieces.
Waterloo hasn’t always made neighbourhood-building a priority in part because it hasn’t had to. The city has some neighbourhoods that are rich enough to afford their own pools and tennis courts.
Other neighbourhoods can’t afford their own facilities or haven’t been able to establish neighbourhood associations.
Waterloo doesn’t plan to replicate Kitchener’s network of community centres, built in part with natural gas revenues that Waterloo doesn’t have.
Other challenges include student campus areas that show stresses and highrise dwellers who don’t always see themselves as neighbours.
The city consulted with more than 1,700 people to draft the new plan.