December 4th 2019, will mark one year since Timmins Mayor George Pirie took his seat at City Hall.

A lot can happen in a year, so he took the time to reflect on his first year as the Mayor of Timmins.

” I’m feeling good about it, obviously it’s been a learning process for me, and I think I’m getting better at it.” -Said Mayor Pirie with a smile on his face.

” The biggest learning curve of course is the difference between running a corporation and running a city. This particular position is more like “Chairman of the Board of Directors” and not like a “CEO” -Said Mayor Pirie.

He went on to add that, Dave Landers is the CAO, and that he’s running the administration, running the city, and that the board sets the course and the CAO actually makes it happen. He also went on to add that the City is very lucky to have an Administration under Dave Landers, and that he is a great leader.

Mayor Pirie and City Council always have projects in mind some are accomplished and some are either pushed back or simply not done because it couldn’t get done. Pirie reflected on what project(s) he was happy to have accomplished.

” First of all I’d like to say thank you to the residents of Timmins because, they’ve elected a great council. The first thing off the books, was the first part of last year. Just getting the warming shelter in place in an emergency response point of view. It allowed us to get through a very difficult winter last year, and we got that done, we got that done quickly, so it was nice to see that happen.” -George Pirie

Now heading into his second year as Mayor, Pirie has new goals in mind and it revolves around accessibility and funding.

” Let’s talk about the Federal Government…  Number one, you’ve heard me talk about the amount of discrepancy of dollars that come into Timmins from the point of view of servicing our homeless population. You take a look at the 28 cots we have at the Living space… It’s just not enough. Charlie Angus knows this, we need the Federal dollars, migrate back into our towns to help us deal with this problem. There’s many things we can do at the Municipal level to help these individuals get through this process, but first and foremost we need the funds from the Federal Government.”

“The second thing of course is, we want to make the Airport a port of entry. We want to have the ability to fly in over the States, we want people to land here and come in here as a port of entry into Canada. It’s critically important also, for our First Nations Community, and it’s critically important to develop the north. Timmins is the “gateway the James-Bay and Hudson’s Bay. It’s by far the largest city in this area, and we should be the gateway to those areas.” -Said Pirie.

To summarize, the main goals for year two is, to continue to create accessibility for people who are less fortunate, and the second goal would be to find a way for both the Provincial and Federal Government to send the city some funding. Going into his second year, Mayor Pirie is confident that things will get done.

” It’s what you’ve got going for you, your confident then that’s what you project. We are not waiting around for the governments to hand us a solution, we’re going to go after it ourselves. There’s no offset of waiting around for people to hand you a solution. We will present solutions, and we will get there.” -Mayor George Pirie.

Pirie officially kicks off his second year as the Mayor of Timmins on December 4th.

Filed under: Local News