Council will tackle the issue of municipal service centre closures at a future meeting due to overwhelming feedback from Chatham-Kent residents.
Council had intended to deal with a report recommending that the municipality shut down underutilized service centres in the towns of Dresden, Ridgetown and Tilbury. The report also recommended closing the Wheatley, Thamesville and Bothwell municipal information desks, which are located in libraries.
The issue garnered a lot of opposition from area residents—with 105 deputations sent in with people providing their feedback about the possibility of closing municipal service centres.
Many people commented that area seniors will miss having the service centres, as they rely on them to make payments and get information on municipal services.
The deputations took almost two hours to be read by municipal staff.
Mayor Darrin Canniff says the public’s response shows how passionate people are about access to services.
“I don’t want to see historical buildings in those communities go,” Canniff says. “The talk would be how do we consolidate services, provide better services in the community, not remove them.”
Canniff says any decision by council will take into account the historic nature of buildings involved.
“As a lot of the deputations pointed out, all the small communities are growing now, we want to see them continue to grow. Those buildings are part of the history of the community.”
Council decided to deal with the report and recommendations at their July 11 meeting rather than extending last night’s council meeting.