Warden continues listening tour

CALEB NICKERSON
SHAWVILLE June 12, 2018
On June 12, around 20 people turned up to Shawville United Church to hear from Pontiac Warden Jane Toller about the various ongoing projects around the region.
Dubbed by Toller as her listening tour, the evening was one of a series that took place in various locales over the course of the past two weeks.
Though listening was the theme of the evening, Toller admitted that she had not consulted local councils before putting the tour together, noting that the meeting on June 11 in Campbell’s Bay had a less than stellar attendance.
“When I put this schedule together, I didn’t consider when the council meetings were,” she said, noting that when she had conducted similar consultations during her tenure on Toronto City Council, the attendance had started low and grown over time.
She began by going over the current state of the Pontiac and then addressing each of the 11 priorities identified by the council of mayors.
“They’re MRC priorities in the sense that we are working on these priorities, but the priorities come from the people of the Pontiac. I wanted to make that point clear,” she said.
The priorities touch on a number of subjects, from improving cellphone and internet service to repairing local roads and infrastructure.
She reiterated the MRC’s commitment to the forestry sector, noting that she currently sits on the Federation of Quebec Municipalities (FQM)’s Forestry Committee. She pointed to various projects that would eventually look to process the lumber coming out of the local forests, such as the cogeneration plant proposal at the Davidson Mill and discussions with Commonwealth Plywood in Rapides des Joachims.