First-year Lake of Bays Mayor Terry Glover is charting plans for 2019. Having served previous years on the council, he is well aware of the challenges ahead.
MyMuskokaNow.com chatted with Glover about what the priorities are for his wide-ranging municipality.
MMN: What kind of things are you setting up for 2019
I’ve got a number of ideas going forward.
I think Lake of Bays greatest asset is its people and I want to improve relationships with the lake associations and volunteer groups.
I, of course, have got to get up to speed with department heads and staff.
I’ve got council working on their ideas. I haven’t quite set committees, but I am getting extremely close.
But I would like to align them on all of their goals.
Of course, I am new to District (Council) so I have to get in there and work the relationships.
And I’ve got the mayors. I know a couple from before but there is a couple of new ones.
I’d like to get together with them and so a couple of them are starting to organize some sort of a way we can do that.
The main projects that I’m looking at is the campaign spoke to affordable housing and hhigh-speedinternet and so those are a couple of big ones.
However, I’ve got a few surprises I am working on and they are of the cultural nature. Â So a big shout out to all the musicians and artists to get in touch with me because I have got some great ideas for that.
MMN: You are also looking to align the brand of Lake of Bays a bit more this year between the four areas. Can you tell us more about that?
Another big deal is the unification of Lake of Bays. We have just completed some branding exercises and it has laid out the groundwork.
But I want to see our four hamlets working together and unite our town.
A lot of people come into the different parts of town and don’t know for example that Baysville is attached to Dorset and so on and so forth.
The new signage we are going to move to put up and it should help.
I want to work on that and work with the different communities.
It’s a big geographic area so the lake kind of gets in the way, but I think we can all work better together.
We’re also looking to expand our library in Dwight and we are going to make some improvements with public works.
We have about four years as a mandate and I’ve got a long-term plan.
A couple of my ideas are going to help stimulate economic growth.
And of course, I’ve really got to get out there an promote Lake of Bays.
MMN: From a taxbase perspective, how are things looking at LOB? Will you need to get external funding for some of your projects?
Certainly, high speed is a very expensive one.
We’ve been investigating it for quite some time. I’m getting pressure from some of the businesses to step it up as best I can.
It’s a density issue. Our population is very spread out. So, of course, the expense of these switch boxes is what the deal is.
Apparently, the cable has come down to a reasonable rate but the boxes are still quite expensive so I’m going to have to try and get some funding from other areas for that kind of thing.
Affordable housing is the other issue that’s pressing. And that’s going to take some work with the folks at district and the other mayor’s to start to get ourselves aligned with how we can do that in a better way.
And as I understand it the doors are open for that kind of a discussion.
But financially we are in great shape.
We’re just starting to approach the budget. Of course, the election has put the budget off  a bit but from everything I see we’re doing just great!
MMN: Affordable, attainable housing seems to be a key issue throughout Muskoka. Do you have a sense of how many units you would need to satisfy housing needs?
I really don’t know that as such. Affordable housing touches so many different areas.
We’re trying to retain the seniors. They’d like to downsize a  bit and so that would involve any number of decisions made at their end.
It’s pretty hard to tell at this point. I’d like to attract some young families if I could. Â Start to increase the tax base and get some younger ideas going.
There are schools of course. We only have one school in Lake of Bays but I don’t like to see it threatened with closure based on smaller class sizes.
But if I can get some people attracted to the area I have had a number of developers talk to me.
I’ve got one little project already starting and on its way in Baysville.
I think it’s a matter of just kind of laying the groundwork and opening the discussion to whoever wants to talk and see what we can do.
And so that’s where I see that going.
There is no question it is a conundrum and I’m not exactly sure that affordable housing is the issue.
Because off the lake in Lake of Bays we are considerably less expensive than say Huntsville or Bracebridge.
I think it involves a number of things. So it’s going to involve talking to the feds, the province, the district and other mayors.
And I think we are going to have to get creative.
I spent quite a great deal of time talking to (Green Party MPP) Matt Richter. He was pointed at the provincial debates last year as being the most creative thinker with regards to affordable housing.
I spent a good deal of time talking to him about it. We’re going to have to get creative to solve this.
It isn’t going to just fall in our laps. I think we’ve got to really work together and address it best we can.