MORE FIREWORKS FOR AJAX: COMMITTEE

GENERAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE APPROVES NEW FIREWORKS BYLAW, HEARS ARGUMENT FOR MORE LIBRARY SPACE

Ajax residents will see more days of fireworks as long as council ratifies the bylaw at its next meeting.

The general government committee passed a number of items on Monday, May 9. The matters will go before council one week later, on May 16 for ratification.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The committee approved an updated fireworks bylaw, which now states fireworks can go off in Ajax on 15 days of the year, up from 10 days in the past.

The bylaw includes three more days of cultural significance where fireworks can be used to celebrate: Diwali, Lunar New Year and Eid al-Fitr.

The existing bylaw permits the discharge of fireworks on Victoria Day and Canada Day and the two days immediately preceding and following each, for a total of 10 days throughout the year.

The updated bylaw restricts the discharge days of fireworks to one day immediately preceding and following the actual day, equalling 15 days.

The bylaw also limits the days of sales to seven, and includes the addition of fire prevention inspectors as enforcement officers.

• A finance report revealed

the Town of Ajax ended 2021 with a net operating budget surplus of nearly $4.8 million. The main drivers of the surplus were wages and benefits, as well as grants offset by higher reserve allocations.

Wages and benefits ended up being almost $6.2 million under budget — primarily as a result of the COVID-19

pandemic. There were a number of part-time layoffs as a result of the provincial lockdown restrictions, facility closures and cancelled programs. There were also a number of vacancies resulting from retirements, internal promotions, resignations and the mandated town vaccination policy.

In the grants folder, the town received $2.8 million in funding from the provincial government to help mitigate the financial impacts of COVID-19, and used $1.125 million of that to cover pandemic-related costs. The balance has been transferred to the public health reserve to be used for ongoing expenditures related to COVID-19.

• The committee endorsed the Town of Ajax Geographic Information Systems (GIS) strategic plan. GIS is a powerful technology that if used effectively, the town can realize cost savings, improve communications, visualize and harness its data, and improve decision-making.

"It's mainly a way to visualize the world that we live in," explained Curt Hinton, consultant and president of Geographic Technologies Group.

A key recommendation is reorganizing and creating a dedicated GIS section within the technology and innovation division, which requires hiring a GIS supervisor and additional GIS staff.

• In a presentation to council, consultants recommended adding a Pickering Village library branch, among other suggestions.

Todd Brown of Monteith Brown Planning Consultants noted Ajax is lacking in library space per capita and in a comparison with similar-sized municipalities, only Barrie was lower.

Recommendations include the town taking an architectural exercise to look into: expanding the main branch, expanding the McLean branch, and creating a new location in Pickering Village.

Brown said the town should construct 27,000 additional square feet of library space in the next 10 years, for a total of 82,000 square feet, including existing space.

No decisions were made on the library at the meeting.