Chatham-Kent council is making sure that residents across the municipality are able to observe Remembrance Day and the holiday season, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday night, Councillor Anthony Ceccacci brought forward a successful motion requesting that municipal staff return to normal service levels for community beautification going forward.
Beautification efforts are typically supported by Chatham-Kent's Public Works Department and include downtown banners, decorations, flower baskets, and barricade installation for special events.
"If we are able to have some sort of Remembrance Day ceremony as well as Christmas decorations, [it] is obviously extremely important to our community during these trying times," Ceccacci said.
Councillor Carmen McGregor spoke in favour of the motion, noting that although Remembrance Day may look a little different this year, it's still important to help commemorate the day of memorial.
"I think there will be a lot of legions and others greatly appreciative if this passes," she said. "A lot of them are struggling financially during COVID and I think this is something to help them move the Remembrance Day services forward. It's my understanding that many of them will be virtual in manner or very low key events but this is one way we can actually help them recognize our veterans."
Also during the meeting, Councillor Mary Clare Latimer introduced a motion requesting that the municipality return to full 2020 pre-COVID-19 approved budget service levels for all remaining services, where warranted by community demand and where allowed under health restrictions.
"It's important I think now to attempt to return to some normalcy within a safe context and a fiscally responsible manner," said Latimer.
However when asked if programs that require significant regulations, such as the Early Learning Program, would require additional preparations before restarting, General Manager of Health and Family Services Dr. April Rietdyk said there could be significant costs for restarting certain programs when factoring in things like extra cleaning measures and personal protective equipment.
"Our recommendations would be for us to take this back and get a really good look at some of our provincially funded programs as we're just kind of coming through and starting with the reopening of our programs and services to get a sense of what that looks like," said Rietdyy. "What I don't want us to run into is starting programs back up when we actually, due to all the other regulations that we have to follow, we don't have enough budgeted dollars to ensure that they are viable moving forward."
Councillor Aaron Hall said he was struggling when it comes to Latimer's motion.
"I really appreciate what Councillor Latimer's intent is with this motion," said Hall. "I guess I'm just concerned this motion may provide a bit of false sense to the community as some of the programs and services may not be ready... I feel like there's a lot more questions that council should get answers to before we move forward with this."
In hopes of getting more details on what returning to pre-COVID-19 service levels would look like, Hall put forward a successful motion to defer Latimer's motion and have municipal staff return to council with a report. The report is expected to be presented at council's next meeting.