22 - Summary Report - West Paris Town Hall Meetings

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ourselves on and/or adopt. And of course, should the City Council direct that any issue, or any portion of town, take priority over others, we will redirect resources as appropriate. It is important to note that not all concerns expressed are ones that the city can address, or at the very least address in the near future or without significant cost. Several examples: 1) the topic of homeless and/or squatters is a rather complicated legal issue, 2) utility rates are indeed high on account of the Waste Water Treatment Plant project and while we have implemented several actions to help alleviate this for our ratepayers, we unfortunately cannot decrease the rates, 3) installation of sidewalks is indeed an ongoing desire for the City, however the sheer cost to do this in mass makes it challenging; 4) like sidewalks, as we recently learned regarding Tributaries 4 and 6, the issue of drainage is also very expensive to address outside of isolated instances of clean up, and 5) trash being picked up once a week was addressed in our recent bidding process for solid waste services. In addition, we will try to investigate the concerns raised to determine that 1) we truly captured the issue being expressed and 2) we are in fact able to address the matter. Some issues may be civil matters (ex: some drainage issues are on private property instead of public). There is much more that could be said, but these are generic overall statements from the concerns raised. We have not prepared a point by point listing of whether each item is one we can or cannot address. I also cannot state that we will "follow up" with every individual on any and all concerns they have expressed in these town halls as that is not always efficient given the dynamic demands we are up against daily. I would however encourage anyone seeking communication on an issue to reach out to my office and we will get you in touch with the appropriate staff person. With this all being said, we are (and have been) going to try and address as many of the concerns raised as possible because 1) if they are indeed public issues, 2) if we have the budgeted funds and 3) we don't have more critical matters needing attention first, then it is part of our job to address them. Furthermore, we are working on making available to the public an online portal where individuals can submit concerns for our investigation. We envision this portal to offer better opportunities for the citizen to interact and even track progress. CONCLUDING REMARKS: In terms of development and infrastructure, portions of west Paris are older than much of the rest of Paris. I believe we are going to learn more about this at the conclusion of our Housing Study, but with aged portions of town there is a reasonable expectation to experience a greater number of nuisance issues and infrastructure concerns as compared to newer portions of the city. One way to stimulate change is to see new development, particularly in residential remodels and/or new construction. Our Five in Five Program is one such initiative designed to target much of west Paris for the purpose of encouraging rehabilitation in the area via new housing construction. We hope that the Housing Study will provide us additional ideas on how we might further stimulate change all throughout town, including west Paris. This however does not happen overnight. In the Page 6 of 12