Bruce County Warden Chris Peabody receives his 2024 Warden's pin from CAO Derrick Thomson on December 7, 2023
Brockton Mayor Chris Peabody is proud of what his municipality accomplished in 2024, and is now looking forward to the new year.
He says that the municipality was able to move forward with affordable housing initiatives.
“We have committed to doing a build. We’re going to copy the same model of build that was done in Kincardine five years ago with 34 affordable housing units. Some of those will include at-market rent.”
The build is part of Bruce County’s work to have more affordable housing in the region, and when they were looking for a site for the build, only Walkerton was willing to put up the land for it.
After two years as Warden of Bruce County, Peabody says that he’s also really proud of the Indigenous Engagement Framework.
“We did a lot of work on that,” he said. “We hosted members of both band councils at a lunch in July, where county council voted on that framework. The framework provides guidelines for all our departments to work toward filling gaps in services that might have occurred with Neyaashiinigmiing and Saugeen First Nation.”
Close to home, the Municipality of Brockton has a lot to look forward to for 2025, particularly preparations for the Brockton homecoming event in 2026, and the International Plowing Match & Rural Expo, which is run by the Ontario Plowman’s Association.
Peabody said that the municipality will be continuing work to build a new recreation centre, which they saw challenges in securing grant funding for in 2024. “We would like to enhance our recreation services, and that would include building a community centre which would service our seniors better – I know there’s a low of demand for a walking track but we didn’t make much progress on the community centre front. That was a little bit of a setback. We had some plans. We put in applications for that new community centre with the Green Building Fund with the federal government but we weren’t successful. So that was a little area where we’re going to have to go back to the drawing board on that.”
He hopes that Brockton will be able to get some other grant funding for other projects, which the municipality would be able to announce in the new year.