Outgoing Mayor of Town of The Blue Mountains, Alar Soever doesn’t plan to slow down until his term formally ends next week.
Soever presided over his final council meeting on Nov. 14, however, a nagging back injury flared up on him during the meeting and he had to depart early and was not able to participate in the closing remarks made by members of council not returning for the coming term.
With just days left in his term, Soever continues to work away and spoke to CollingwoodToday in his town hall office. With time running short, Soever was using his last few days to help publicize that property tax relief is available for low-income seniors and people with disabilities through a Grey County program. With the help of the local United Way, information about the program is now available on 211. Soever’s last resolution as a member of county council was to raise awareness of the program.
The mayor was also assisting with the town’s preparations to present its concerns about Bill 23 - More Homes Built Fast Act to the province’s standing committee on heritage, infrastructure and cultural policy. The town appeared before the committee on Nov. 17.
Soever has been working with mayor-elect Andrea Matrosovs on the transition to the new administration and says he is looking forward to some quiet time after his time in office is finished.
“I have mixed feelings. A person has to retire sometime. There are lots of other things I want to do. One is to take time off,” he said. “I’m very proud of all of our achievements as a council. We accomplished a lot. We were a different council. We were more involved than most councils in Grey County.”
Soever offered effusive praise to the staff of the town for their “collaborative approach” with council.
“I had been mayor for six months when another mayor asked me: 'how do you get along with your CAO?' I said: 'fine' and they asked, 'how do you do that?'" he said with a laugh.
Soever said he is particularly proud of the town’s hard work and efforts to track down and update the assessment rolls.
“One of our biggest accomplishments was catching up on our missing assessment,” he said. “We had situations where people were living in a house for two years and still paying the vacant land tax rate.”
The mayor said the town was seeing approximately 60 per cent of its annual building permit values captured as supplementary taxation.
“We wondered: 'where is the other 40 per cent?'” he said.
Council and staff made assessment a focus and priority and relayed this message to the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation. The results were immediate.
In the first year, supplementary taxation was 242 per cent of building permit values. Since then, Soever says it has been around 120 per cent.
“We’re pretty much caught up,” he said, noting that it resulted in $581 million in extra assessment and $1.6 million in property tax revenue. “Our taxes would be 13 per cent higher if we hadn’t found that.”
Soever said he would always cherish how the entire community pulled together to deal with the COVID pandemic.
“That’s what I will remember the most about my four years – how the community came together during COVID,” he said. “We had volunteers step up and run vaccination clinics. The way the community pulled together, that was the most pleasing part of the term.”
Soever said council passed a town-wide masking bylaw as a signal to visitors that the community was taking the situation very seriously. The Blue Mountains is a popular tourist destination for visitors from around the province and country and the community never went down the path of telling outsiders to stay away.
“We didn’t stress: don’t come here. It was all about how they behaved when they did come,” said Soever. “In other municipalities, there was a lot of angst and opposition about visitors. I’m very proud of how our community welcomed our seasonal residents and visitors.”
Soever said he is looking forward to the new council continuing progress towards completing two high-profile projects: the Campus of Care and the Gateway attainable housing project.
“I’m sure I will get involved in some things. [Mayor-elect Matrosovs] is very capable. I’m very happy she won the election,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed my time. It was fun. I’ve been very lucky.”
