Integral York Region chairperson role demands dialogue

YorkRegion.com
Dec. 4, 2014
Chris Traber

Dec. 11 will be a watershed for York Region.

A pivotal decision impacting every constituent in our nine municipalities will be made that day when regional council members appoint a new regional chairperson and CEO to replace longtime leader Bill Fisch.

As political lead for one of Canada’s fastest growing regions, the nominee’s term through 2018 will abound with challenges, issues and opportunities.

The chairperson’s agenda deserves and demands dialogue, Metroland Central publisher and vice-president Ian Proudfoot said.

Accordingly, York Region Media Group has reached out to community leaders – to share seasoned and reasoned opinion on this integral role, the qualities the appointee must bring to the office and the issues he or she must address.

“There are several prevailing themes and a plethora of ancillary matters. None are more or less important than the others,” Proudfoot said of the responses. “Issues confronting the region range from housing, transit, growth, senior, youth and newcomer services to poverty, homelessness, growth and infrastructure.”

Commentary on the new chairperson’s perceived skills is also diverse.

“From fiscal responsibility to working cooperatively and collaboratively with all levels of government to owning and delivering an erudite vision, the chairperson will need to be a supremely experienced administrator,” Proudfoot said.

“The major opportunity for our new chairperson and council is to manage all aspects of our growth, from housing affordability to transit to social services and thereby ensure York Region maintains an envied quality of life for all its residents,” United Way York Region CEO Daniele Zanotti said.

Over the past decade, regional council has played a leadership role in defining and addressing some of our emerging social pressures, Zanotti said. But increased investments in critical frontline programs, including those dealing with housing affordability, a regional seniors’ strategy and newcomer supports are necessary.

Additionally, at the core of the region’s challenges, is the growing number of people in our neighbourhoods living in poverty, Zanotti said.  In fact, the poverty rate in specific census tracts of our region is growing faster than the provincial and national average – faster than Toronto and Peel.  To solve this, together, before we can develop solutions, we need a deeper research understanding of our neighbourhoods and municipalities – where is poverty, what is driving it locally, what supports would help us move people to prosperity?

“Regional council, by its very composition, is a collaboration, a group of nine municipalities committed to a regional agenda,” he added. “I would suggest there is, at the core, only one essential quality for our incoming chairperson – to be a selfless, relentless and innovative collaborator.”

Each of York Region’s nine chambers’ of commerce will have important local issues for council, Markham Board of Trade president and CEO Richard Cunningham said.

“In Markham, our government affairs committee is focused on two key areas – housing and transit,” he said. “We hear from our members that their employees are making long commutes due to a lack of local housing in their price range or they are losing staff to jobs in communities closer to where they live.”

Improving transit is the other key issue for those who wish to work and live in the region, he said.

Seneca College board chairperson and former York Region District School Board education director Bill Hogarth says the region’s next leader faces the challenges of an ever-changing local, Canadian and global economic dynamic along with the infrastructure and social pressures that come with growth.

A number of specific issues will impact York, our youth in particular, in the next four years, he said.

The new chairperson should have a range of experiences and understanding about our region, he said.

“However a most important quality is that he or she be willing and be able to have or to acquire the skills required to lead a changed and changing region, Hogarth said. “The status quo has to lead to continuous improvement and reasoned progress. In other words, a person who can lead in the reality an ever changing future - a change agent.”

While our population is aging we also have a large portion of our demographic that is youth, he said.

The following realities are upon us and the realities require that our new chairperson consider a pronounced action for youth, he said.

“Pressure is growing for the region and society to prepare youth for jobs and careers that may not exist,” he said.

The action required is to make new jobs a part of economic development and invite youth to participate in entrepreneurial hubs.

“Involve Businesses, Seneca, York University and Boards of Education as participants,” Hogarth added.

Our region’s strength is diversity and the new chairperson will need to build on it, he said.

“Create youth forums that include international learning, cultural understanding and youth diversity relationships. Anticipate

cultural and diversity issues and address them immediately through such a forum,” Hogarth recommended.

Ubiquitous, interactive technologies shape how youth live, learn, see themselves and relate to the world, he said.

“Have a person or persons connecting with youth through social media so that the chairperson and regional council are up to the second about youth issues and thinking,” he said. “Twitter rocks! Releasing ingenuity and stimulating creativity will inspire youth. They will respect that the Chair does not have all the answers.”

There are the realities of youth homelessness, poverty, disengagement, and crime,” the educator said. Sustained, each is demoralizing, debilitating and expensive.

“Build on the agencies that are already addressing the concerning issues but assure that there is a coordinated regional action,” he said “Create a task group to review how these issues are being addressed and consider new approaches based and what can be learned from other jurisdictions.”

Above all, coordinate and collaborate with all that are involved with youth across the region, he said.

“Create an update action group that meets three times a year to share and develop intervention ideas,” Hogarth said. “One of the meetings being should before budget deliberations. We do not get our fair share of social service dollars so we have to think and think wisely about how we can monetarily deal with youth issues.”

“Majorities will become the minorities in the region, creating the need for insights into social cohesion,” he said. “Social media will define how people gain authority and use it. Millennials will insist on solutions to accumulated problems and injustices. Their voices will be more pronounced.”

As such, Hogarth suggests the next chairperson must demonstrate an “ability to deal with the here and now while recognizing emerging futures.”

An ongoing challenge for the region and its chairperson will be to ensure community services and infrastructure, including hospitals, EMS and public health services, keep pace with York’s unprecedented growth, Mackenzie Health president and CEO Altaf Stationwala said.

Ongoing financial and political support from the region will be crucial to the development of Mackenzie Health’s Vaughan hospital, he said.

“The region has been a strong supporter of local healthcare providers including Mackenzie Health’s Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital and the new Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital, and we look forward to that continued support as we work together to meet the healthcare needs of the people of York Region,” he said

“The new chairperson needs to be able to foster a culture of innovation and technological advancement to continue the great work that has been done to establish a health care technology innovation hub in York Region,” Stationwala added.

“He or she also needs to be able to foster a culture of innovation and technological advancement to continue the great work that has been done to establish a healthcare technology innovation hub here in York Region,” he said. “Currently York Region has one of the largest hubs of medical technology companies in the country and we need to continue to support and grow sectors that not only support excellence and innovation in healthcare, but also create high value, knowledge economy jobs for those who work and live in our region.”

The next chairperson needs to have the ability to look at how community growth, industry changes, infrastructure planning and economic development all come together to meet the needs of the people of the region, Markham Stouffville Hospital president and CEO Janet Beed said.

The new chairperson needs to take all the pieces that make the region work and create followership, success and commitment to move the regional agenda forward, Beed said.

“They need to be able to think broadly and ask questions such as  - how does transit influence housing and how does that influence education?  The chairperson needs to look at the interconnectedness of the sectors and understand the importance of integration and access.”

“This person should be a facilitator, a listener and a big picture thinker. They need to be someone who understands what the region is today, where it's going and what it will be in the future. Their role is to help us get there,” she said.

Regional council, Beed added, must play a role in ensuring hospitals, EMS, public health and the other supports are providing services that the community needs.

York Catholic District School Board chairperson Elizabeth Crowe believes the next chairperson’s challenges in York will include the need for affordable housing, our “invisible” poverty and providing necessary infrastructure to support low-income earners, further improving transit and increasing employment opportunities.

The board and its students will need the region’s support in creating safe walking routes to schools, establishing breakfast/snack programs where needed and finding ways to increase affordable day care spaces at schools.

The board will be struggling with declining enrolments in the southern part of the region as well as managing reasonable travel times for students that need busing or transit to get to school, Crowe said. By addressing the need for affordable housing, young families will be able to move into the region which will help us keep our schools viable.

“We also need to work with the region to implement Safe Walking Routes to School, access to regional recycling programs for all our schools, and breakfast and snack programs where needed,” she said. “Daycare is an issue, and the board and region need to find ways to increase the number of affordable spaces in our schools.

The new chair of York Region needs to be a team builder, working well with elected politicians and staff, Crowe said.

“It needs to be someone respected by the business community. They also have to be a visionary leader.”

The new chairperson will have to address and create a focus on the growing needs of seniors, especially in the areas of accommodation and better health maintenance options, CHATS (Community and Home Assistance to Seniors) development director Tim Jones said.

“Although the region recently divested itself of direct service provision at a number of assisted living facilities in favour of approved agency support, we need more facilities for seniors which allow them the opportunity to live independently with or without support which have been demonstrated to be a third the cost of long-term care,” said Jones, a former Aurora mayor and regional councillor.

The chairperson will need to address and create a focus on the growing needs of our aging population, Jones said.

When it gets to the point where long term care becomes the only option, the region requires additional long term care accommodation as opposed to wait lists for those that are currently waitlisted beyond their life span expectation, he said

The new chairperson and councillors must prioritize this area of need within the capital operating budget of the region and must become advocates both at the provincial and federal levels of government, he said.

“Given this boom in seniors’ numbers, consider a working committee of council and targeted community representatives to focus on the regional role for support for an aging population, to identify what the regional priorities are and what role the region should have in addressing those priorities,” he said

The next chairperson needs exceptionally strong interpersonal skills with an ability of finding what council members can live with in their decision-making, he said.        

The appointee must have an understanding of community sensitivity within a large urban influenced infrastructure and an ability to translate complex growth, financial and infrastructure necessities, short and long range into common language for residents to understand, he said.

“The region needs to be better understood for what it does especially given the tax dollars we commit to it,” Jones said, adding it would help if the appointee brought a sense of humour to the job.