Oxford County council launches new Future Oxford Sustainability Plan
Article content
Oxford County celebrated a soft launch of its new sustainability plan, Future Oxford, at the county’s administration building Wednesday night.
Chris Friesen, chair of the transition board for the community sustainability plan, said there would be an official presentation on the Future Oxford Sustainability Plan to council following the launch.
“They approved the plan in early September and they approved some funding, so we thought we should probably come back and say this is what we’re doing next,” Friesen said. “County council’s well aware of where we’ve been. We’re going to spend a little bit of tonight reminding people of how we got here, but more so what people are going to hear in the county council meeting is this is what we’ve got planned short term and longer term.”
Friesen said the short term refers to what the board has planned between now and January’s hard launch, with the long term coming into play once they have the Future Oxford partnership group.
“By the time we get to the end of January, if timing works out, we want to have hired a program director,” he said. “Because, like most organizations, most of us who sit around the table, this isn’t our day job. We’re volunteering and, if this plan is going to move forward, it’s not going to move forward if it’s just another job each of us are doing.
“So we need to hire somebody where it will be their job … to take the plan and make it happen. Our job is to help them do their job and vice-versa.”
Friesen also said the plan doesn’t have any baseline data as of right now, which explains the deliberate gaps for targets in the plan.
“We chose not to put in targets because we didn’t know the base-line data,” Friesen said. “It’s great to say you want to increase something by 10 per cent, but from where? If you don’t know what your starting line is, what does it matter if you go up by 10 per cent?”
The county will be getting this baseline data around eight months after the hard launch from a county study commissioned through the University of Waterloo involving the Canadian Index of Well-being.
Three groups from Oxford County representing the three pillars of the sustainability plan – community, economy and the environment – came out to showcase what they do. Some of those groups included Stewardship Oxford, Oxford Creative Connections, and the Oxford Cheese Trail, as well as Jay Heaman, who represented smart energy in the county.
“We want to encourage people to know more about what we do in the county in these three areas,” Friesen said.
The hard launch for the plan is slated for Jan. 28 at the Future Oxford Expo at the Oxford Auditorium in Woodstock, but Friesen said a time has yet to be decided. A few speakers will be on hand to give presentations, including Dr. Jose Etcheverry, who has been involved locally with Woodstock Hydro’s Whites Lane microgrid project.
County council adopted the plan, which outlines many goals for the county’s community, economy and environment, on Sept. 9.
Goals include making Oxford accessible for all citizens while creating a knowledgeable, equitable and creative county. These goals will be achieved through initiatives that include providing high quality and accessible health care, social services, support programs and housing, as well as developing accessible intercommunity transportation options to reduce reliance on personal transportation.
The county also hopes to foster a thriving economy with this plan by, in part, supporting and fostering community sustainability. The county intends to cultivate entrepreneurship in Oxford, and encourage production and consumption of locally produced food and products.
Finally, the county wants to be recognized as an environmental leader. Along with achieving 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050, the county plans to protect and restore the ecosystem, move away from fossil fuels and enhance low carbon transportation, achieve zero waste and ensure long-term protection of all source water.
“What we want the public to know is that we appreciate all of the input we got to get this far,” Friesen said. “Our job is to let the people know that we’ve listened … and as they see the plan being done, hopefully they’ll see a little bit what they’ve said in what we’re doing. If we do our job right than that’s what we’ll achieve.”
For more information on the Future Oxford Sustainability Plan, and to look at the plan itself online, visit www.futureoxford.ca.
Future Oxford > Home
A vision worth celebrating. Future Oxford: A Community Sustainability Plan is the community’s vision for how we will manage community, environmental and economic ...
Read more...