In an effort to bring some beauty to the streets of Chatham-Kent during the pandemic, council is slightly tweaking recommendations that it previously approved.
During the May 11 council meeting, councillors approved closing or adjusting several municipal services as a way to recover $2 million in taxes to better respond to the financial pressures of COVID-19.
One of the services that were eliminated was horticulture, flower planting, and maintenance. However, during Monday night's meeting Councillor Melissa Harrigan asked for some clarification around the wording of horticulture.
According to Harrigan, many community groups across Chatham-Kent rely on the public works department to help hang decorative flower baskets in the summer. When council voted in favour of reduced horticulture services, it created some miscommunication with staff and an assumption that Chatham-Kent's Public Works department would no longer be partnering with community groups to hang the flower baskets.
Harrigan brought forward a successful motion on Monday requesting that CK maintain its service levels to communities with regards to hanging and removing their flower baskets for the 2020 season.
She said it had been brought to her attention that many of the local horticulture organizations, BIAs and community groups had already ordered their flower baskets for the season when council approved the service level adjustment.
"Tilbury, in particular, has already paid $3,000 for their baskets," she explained. "While that seems like a low number when you're working in the municipality and we're talking about our budgets and the $2 million that were trying to find, for a community group, that is what they're fundraising for every year and that is something that they have a goal to do, is to put up those flowers. When you multiply this across CK you can see how it adds up to tens of thousands of dollars in our community not-for-profit sector that would have been spent on those flowers."
She said many groups were now scrambling with what to do and she worried they would try to put the baskets up on their own or that all the flowers already purchased would go to waste.
In addition, she said hanging the flowers would offer some beautification throughout the municipality, something that she said is needed more than ever during the pandemic.
This sentiment was echoed by Councillor Michael Bondy, who referred to it as a great motion.
"I can't see that that's going to be a really big imposition on staff," said Bondy. "It's a great thing to do... hanging flower baskets, I don't really believe we're going to be deploying troops to take care of this. It seems minuscule to me but yet I think it'll have a pretty positive effect on what looks like could be a grim summer... It's a good thing, it shows the communities that we're not giving up totally on our summer."
According to Thomas Kelly, manager of engineering and infrastructure, it will cost $26,000 to provide the service of hanging and removing the baskets for the remainder of the 2020 season. This cost includes the outsourced equipment rentals and contractors, internal labour, and the use of municipal equipment and vehicles.
The maintenance of the flowers throughout the summer will be handled by the individual community groups.