Town to assist with award nominations in effort to ensure citizens recognized

Officials here want to ensure deserving local citizens receive proper recognition, so they are developing a process to assist the public with award nominations.

At the Jan. 20 meeting, council directed staff to develop a process to solicit nominations for various awards from the community and assist with filing, as well as to facilitate direct nominations from the municipality.

In a report to council, clerk’s assistant Peggy Schieck explained the town regularly receives correspondence from various ministries and agencies inviting nominations for a wide range of citizen’s awards.

Nomination requests the town receives annually include:

– Lincoln M. Alexander Award for outstanding young people;

– Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers;

– Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship;

– Senior Achievement Award;

– June Callwood, Outstanding Achievement Award

– Volunteer Service Award; and

– Premier Award for Excellence.

“The normal procedure is to place nominations on the agenda,” Schieck states in the report.

“If a member of council wants to nominate a person they must request the correspondence be considered at a subsequent meeting. Staff cannot recall filing nominations for community members using this process, and is concerned that deserving people in Minto are not being nominated for awards.”

Noting the community has many deserving volunteers, Mayor George Bridge agreed individuals and groups in the community might wish to nominate local citizens but find the process “daunting.

“I do believe there are a lot of people that don’t get nominated because of the process,” he said.

Councillor Judy Dirksen suggested a process involving both citizen and council nominations would work best.

“I would like to see as many minds on it as possible. I think it’s great that the community has a say in it, but we need to backstop it in case we don’t get any responses,” said Dirksen.

The report provided several options for improving the process and council directed staff to develop a process to solicit nominations from the community and follow up to assist with filing.

In some instances, the approach would see staff bringing forward names for council to nominate on behalf of the town.

 

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