Residents want cleaner capital
Reducing garbage and littering, improving landscape, listed as 2015 priorities
Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Published Monday, February 2, 2015
IQALUIT
Iqaluit residents want a cleaner city with more landscaping, the capital's sustainability co-ordinator heard at a beautification meeting Jan. 28.
Iqaluit resident Ed McKenna votes on the beautification issues most important to him at a meeting Jan. 28. Issues selected will now be the focus of separate working groups that will come up with ideas for this summer's beautification projects. - Casey Lessard/NNSL photo |
And what they want, they will get, assuming they're willing to put their backs into it. Tangible projects to reduce garbage and littering and to improve landscaping will be chosen by resident working groups and performed by volunteers with support from city staff.
"It's up to the working groups to decide whether they're going to honour the survey respondents interests," sustainability co-ordinator Robyn Campbell said. "There's a huge amount of information about garbage and what people want to do with it, or a lot of people who just said, 'Clean it up, just clean it up. Do whatever it takes to clean it up.' "
About 20 people attended the meeting, using sticky stars to mark their votes on a board listing priority topics that included the beach, public art and walkways. These priority areas were determined based on feedback from 100 residents who responded to a survey.
"We received a lot of feedback, which means people really care, which is awesome," Campbell said. "Fixing potholes and fixing roads, that's a municipal responsibility. Citizens can't help create sidewalks. It won't work. We're going to be informing the directors that those are their responsibilities."
Although garbage and littering were separate categories, earning 10 and nine votes respectively, those in attendance conceded the two are similar enough to warrant merging them and focusing on that problem first. They were also top priorities for the survey respondents, mentioned 60 and 40 per cent of the time, respectively.
"We all share in the cigarette butt epidemic," mentioned resident Cam McGregor, who called on the chamber of commerce and territorial and federal governments to consider their responsibility in beautifying the city, including up to "100,000 cigarette butts outside public buildings."
Landscaping and planting garnered 14 votes at the meeting, despite being the lowest priority of the six, mentioned by 25 per cent of respondents. A working group will develop a plan for a landscaping project this summer.
Public art and walkways received eight votes each, and were mentioned by 30 and 25 per cent of respondents, respectively.
The beach, a target for 40 per cent of survey respondents, was the lowest priority at the meeting with only seven votes. However, Campbell told those in attendance ahead of the vote that the Qikiqtani Inuit Association had a plan for the beach because it is Inuit-owned land out of municipal control.
The issues not addressed this year will be addressed in coming years, she said, since the city has limited resources and wants to see at least one project come to fruition by the fall. Local businesses are interested in sponsoring appropriate projects that the working group decides to pursue, she said.
"The ideas we are going to be looking at are ideas that are practical, achievable actions that can be done by citizens and city staff working together," she said. "It's an experimental idea. It might not entirely work. We're going to try to make it work. We've got a better chance of doing something great together than we do just by holding what we've done before."
Anyone interested in joining the working group or volunteering to assist the projects can contact Campbell at the city.
