Perth South Mayor, Jim Aitcheson, was amalgamated prior to the municipal elections.
Aitcheson says looking forward to the next 4 years, there are some clear goals in mind.
“We’re just hoping to keep advancing the development of James Street South, which is in Perth South, and we got a couple other little developments that are gonna happen and they’ll be good for the tax base. You know, you can’t just rely on one small sector for tax base so we’re just trying to expand that a little,” says Aitcheson.
Aitcheson adds they want to remain fiscally responsible with high costs putting strain on everyone.
“We want to keep things fiscally responsible because everyone is struggling a bit with high costs, we’re in no different a boat than anybody else, our costs are going up and we have to be fiscally responsible,” Aitcheson adds.
One thing that every municipality has to tackle is the housing and homelessness issues that continue to plague modern day society. Aitcheson notes there’s no easy fix to the issue.
“That’s a huge problem and it’s tough in Perth South to do a lot, we don’t have a lot of housing development at the moment, we’re 90 percent agriculture. But we are getting more houses built on infill lots and different things like that. But again, we can’t control the cost of building. One of the things we’ve been doing, too, is we’ve been severing off farm houses. So instead of tearing them down, people are severing them off, fixing them up and living in them, and that’s good, too,” Aitcheson says.
However, that solution won’t work for everyone. Aitcheson says the goal is to try and invite different types of builds that are more affordable to modern day families.
