The Upper Thames River Conservation Authority has put out a call for bids on drafting a new strategic plan to help them plan out the next five years.
Teresa Hollingsworth, manager of community and corporate services for the Authority, said the idea for the new strategic plan is to provide them a blueprint to help move into the future amid some institutional changes and new legislative requirements.
“Coming out of COVID, we had a lot of people retire within the organization, and now we have to deal with new provincial requirements and we’ve been doing a lot of tweaking to our program delivery in response to all those factors,” she said. “We’re listening and speaking with the community and also finding out what our priorities are.”
Hollingsworth couldn’t pinpoint just one area of the Authority that will see the majority of the focus of a new plan, mostly because of the work they’ve already done behind the scenes in order to keep service levels high.
“We have done a pretty thorough draft watershed strategy update and a conservation lands update, and those are now going out for public review,” she said. “We want to make sure that the kinds of things we see as priorities are the same things the community wants to see, making sure we have our efforts in the right areas. Some areas of the watershed are under a lot of development pressure, so we’ve had to make sure that we can respond to requests for information and keep our hazard maps updated with all the latest information.”
She added that with so many things happening at the same time they’re trying to work with their municipal partners and other communities the UTRCA serves to keep them all updated with what’s going on.
Hollingsworth said that requests for proposals are due August 16, and the new strategic plan is expected to be received December 13. She said the public will have a chance to comment on the new plan as part of that process but that date has not been set.
