The Town of Sutton officially presented its new “Family and Seniors Policy” and the action plan for the policy to the public at a meeting Feb. 9. 

The policy is the result of the work carried out by a steering committee headed by councillor Lynda Graham, elected official responsible for family and seniors’ issues, over the last year.

Last year, a series of consultations were held with certain focus groups and citizens were also encouraged to take part in a survey to give their input as to what they wanted to see in their community. 

The collaboration between citizens and the steering committee allowed the municipality to draw up a five-year action plan (2023-2027) focused on nine fields of action: housing and living environment, transportation and mobility, social participation, recreation, respect and social inclusion, communication and information, health and social services, safety, outdoor spaces, and buildings.

The action plan outlines 21 objectives and 36 actions that the municipality intends on implementing to ensure what Mayor Robert Benoît referred to as “quality of life” in Sutton. 

“The process was, first off, to listen to people, to listen for their needs. If you’ve looked at we’ve done over the last year, we’ve had several listening experiences for citizens. So, that was one part of the process, with the family and senior people, but that’s not all. We also have ‘Dream Sutton’ that’s really important because we touch almost the same issues,” said Benoît. 

Dream Sutton is an online platform that encourages citizens can give their input on certain municipal projects. 

“If I want to say, bottom line, what the issue is out there it’s how do we enhance the quality of life for citizens? That’s what we are listening to. (…) If you look at the policy there are nine action items. (…) The bottom line for all of those issues is quality of life. For every one of those nine items we have actions that we want to implement in the course of the next three to four years,” continued Benoît.

The municipality already had an existing family and seniors policy, but Benoît noted that the current administration recognized it was in need of an update. 

“I think everybody recognized that it was done a long time ago and things have changed tremendously for the last years. We wanted to really be sure that it was up to date,” he said. 

Benoît told CIDI that he believes the new policy sets out concrete actions for the municipality to monitor over the next couple of years. 

“One of the problems with Sutton is that there was no follow-up on the actions. (…) We’ve already said in the policy that there will be a follow-up on the action plan two times a year,” he highlighted. 

Benoît provided an example as to what issues the municipality plans to address, and how, when looking at transportation.

“There’s issues about the number of cars, the speed on Main Street, how do we cross Main Street safely, how do we get more walking paths in the town, secure walking paths. Those are all items we have been working for the last year,” he explained. “We are discussing those issues with the Ministry of Transportation because Main Street is owned by the Ministry of Transportation. We need to come up with comprehensive solutions that everybody would agree on.”

Having more social housing, affordable housing, and communication with teenagers are also major priorities for Sutton. 

“What the members have conveyed is that there is a lot of activities for young children and older people, but there’s a gap for teenagers. (…) We need to take better care of the teenage population of Sutton because maybe there is a lack of leisure time, a lack of something to do, after school,” noted Benoît. 

To ensure a successful action plan, the municipality will be collaborating with different community groups and organizations in Sutton. 

“The town will act more as a leader, but the implementation of these actions are mostly related to community groups. We are working with them to implement those items, but we will be orchestrating the delivery of services for the different groups,” explained Benoît.

 Benoît emphasized that he truly believes that  "quality of life is fundamental for a village" like Sutton.

“This is important for us because our economy depends on quality of life, it depends on residential areas, it depends on leisure activities, community sense, those are the elements that are working. We don’t have any industry here, we don’t have a lot of commercial space to rent. (…) The key for us to have happy people living in Sutton,” he said. 

The revision of the policy and its action plan was supported by a $12,000 financial contribution under the Programme de soutien à la démarche Municipalité amie des aînés (MADA). 

For more information on the “Family and Seniors Policy,” visit the Sutton website.

Listen to the full interview below: