Mayor sets priorities
Robert Janes lists infrastructure as top concern entering second term
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
RANKIN INLET
Robert Janes has his priorities firmly set as he begins his second three-year term as mayor of Rankin Inlet.
Mayor Robert Janes listens as hamlet senior administrative officer Justin Merritt, right, goes over the particulars of a project in Rankin Inlet this past week. - Darrell Greer/NNSL photo |
Janes said his first term wasn't as productive as he had hoped due to an illness he was battling.
He said the situation was serious enough that he spent a fair amount of time away from his duties.
"Having said that, I did make a really concerted effort to ensure I met a lot of the priorities I set while running for mayor the first time," said Janes. "And I did meet a lot of them, particularly the ones that are multi-year projects such as the arena.
"We now know we are going to get our new arena, with the first nail set to be driven in during 2017.
"It's going to be a nice building but, unfortunately, it's not going to be the multi-purpose facility we originally intended. But beggars can't be choosers."
Janes said the lack of a multi-use facility means a community hall and hamlet office remain two major pieces of infrastructure still needed by the community.
He said he has been working on the two projects and they are moving forward.
"Our community hall is woefully small for the size of our community now. The truth of the matter is we don't have enough room to be able to do anything.
"In fact, to be totally honest, if certain officials decided to really come down on it, we would no longer be allowed to do a lot of what we are getting done in there.
"We're fortunate that sometimes we can do them."
The hamlet recently relocated its two bylaw officers to the fire hall, so the mayor can finally have an office in the hamlet building.
Janes said anytime government officials visit the community now, the hamlet takes them around to view the local facilities.
He said it makes an impression when the visitors see how little the hamlet is working with in some areas.
"Back in the 1980s, the hamlet office had four less programs to administer than what we have now. It was easy enough to operate in this environment back then, plus we only had a population of about 1,200.
"It's getting more and more difficult to run what we have on the go now and we want to be able to offer the community more programs, services and activities, but we don't have the space to do it.
"We want our politicians to realize we need the improvements and have them start working to help us out a little bit."
Janes said he's also beginning to concentrate his efforts on securing a community-development officer for Rankin Inlet.
He said that would enable the hamlet to access funding outside the Government of Nunavut (GN).
"With that position filled, we'd be able to start initiatives, sort of like the 3P concept, where you have different partnerships of various government departments and agencies contributing to a particular program.
"The major thing I learned during my first term as mayor is how much different this position is from being a hamlet councillor or employee.
"Some of the issues and priorities you have to deal with tend to be a lot more intense than they are when you're a municipal employee or a councillor."
The hamlet has also been dealing with issues surrounding the local cemetery for the past three years.
Janes said the bottom line is, every place the hamlet was thinking about maybe expanding or relocating the cemetery to was outside the community.
He said that would create a problem with people, especially elders, being used to just going to the top of the hill in town.
"We eventually decided, since we did have a bit more room on the hill, we'd spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars to expand the existing cemetery. We did a community-planning assessment this past year and we came to the conclusion we could probably get another 50 to 100 graves up there.
"So we're looking at landscaping it and putting in new fences and things to have a really nice cemetery in its current location."
Janes said his final priority focuses on the ongoing problems of the local dump.
He said the hamlet spent more than $300,000 of its own money on the dump this past year.
"That hurt, of course, because that money could have been used on something else like new programming.
"Historically the GN is supposed to take care of that, but we used our own money to do a lot of work up there.
"It's a lot cleaner than what it was, and we have designated areas now for different types of refuse.
"We've made a lot of improvements there, because we're not going to be using a new dump anytime soon but, hopefully this year, we'll assess and identify what we have to do, once and for all, to look at using the proposed new dump that's past the gravel pit about 2.5 km outside of town."
