Mayor of Barrie reflects on first 100 days in office

Looking back on his first 100 days in office, Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall has already started to fulfil some of his six main campaign promises.

Nuttall, who is no stranger to politics, celebrated his first 100 days in office last week.

“One of the first things that we did was we approved our strategic plan to create an affordable place to live, community safety, a thriving community, infrastructure, investments and responsible governance,” he said.

When he was running for mayor in 2022, Nuttall outlined his six main priorities: to freeze taxes, create jobs for Barrie, provide affordable housing, end the prison drop-off at the bus terminal, and have a city where people could feel safe.

In keeping with that, a big part of approving the strategic plan for 2023 included freezing any increases to the city’s operations budget to invest more money to address roads and infrastructure issues.

Looking at what’s next, Nuttall said he is working to end the prisoner drop-off at the downtown Barrie bus station.

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“We’re working with the province to ensure that inmates that are not local to our area and are being released from the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene are provided with a safe journey back to their home community, where they access proper resources and support,” he said.

Over the next year, the mayor also hopes to make some changes to the city’s tree replacement program. He said by bringing the program in-house versus using the local conservation authority, the city will save money overall while also being able to plant more trees.

“This is a prime example of a place where we are able to do more, but it’s costing less, and a place where we’ve actually found efficiencies to improve the lives and the quality of life here in the city of Barrie,” Nuttall said.

The new mayor also mentioned he is starting to have conversations with the local school boards to develop a partnership to use school facilities for after-hours programming.

Nuttall also talked about his desire to build up the relationships started by the previous council to bring electrical vehicle pilot projects to Barrie. This includes a pilot project to bring two battery-electric buses to Barrie Transit to reduce emissions.

Nuttall, who also served as the member of Parliament for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte from 2015 to 2019 and as Barrie’s Ward 10 councillor from 2006 to 2014, also talked about what it was like returning to municipal politics.

“The lack of partisanship here and all of the partnerships that exist here, it’s been really nice. It’s been refreshing when a bunch of folks are able to get into the same room, maybe have different ideas on how to get to an end result, but agree on where to move the city too,” Nuttall said.

“That collaborative, co-operative approach we’re seeing from members of council across the board and certainly from our public service, it’s fantastic to see and to be part of.”