Chatham-Kent council is looking to apply a climate change lens to the municipal budget.
In a presentation to council during the first night of budget deliberations, Chatham-Kent’s environmental planner Gabriel Clark said the goal of applying a climate lens to the budget is to identify opportunities to reduce emissions and enhance resilience to climate change through the municipality’s investments.
The lens will allow council in their decision making process, to ask a series of questions to evaluate potential projects to ensure climate change benefits are considered during the process and integrated when possible.
The municipality is currently working on a climate change action plan, which will address the framework for a climate conscious budget.
Clarke said when council makes decisions through a climate lens they will have to consider not only environmental benefits, but also the economic benefits and the end-user benefits.
Meantime, a number of groups made deputations, including a group of aqua-fit users from the Wallaceburg pool asking for fairness for recreation fees.
Council spent time at the meeting going over staffing position requests from various departments, as well as looking at the capital budget—specifically completing Phase 3 of the Round the River Trail, which council approved to stay in the capital budget.
After a few changes, the proposed budget’s 4.99% hike was lowered to 4.71%.
Councillors will grab their knives and continue to look for savings as budget deliberations are scheduled for tonight and tomorrow.