City Service

I’ve spoken to thousands of people in Ward 6. In addition to introducing myself to people, my goal has been to understand and document people’s concerns. One of my biggest tasks as a councillor will be to address those concerns to the best of my abilities. In my conversations, I have heard many types of concerns. Four have come up more than any other — traffic safety, rising property taxes, a lack of city follow-up to resident problems and crime in some neighbourhoods.

This is my commitment to city-follow-up and my priority of providing responsive resident (customer) service.

The City Service & Follow-Up Issue

Mississauga is a big city and people have a wide-variety of city service issues including the following:

dead boulevard trees,
snow clearing property damage,
broken street lights,
uneven, trip-hazard sidewalks,
problems with postal and utility boxes,
blocked storm drains,
weeds and uncut grass on city street side properties,
excessive snow windrows left by snow plows,
and more.

Some of these issues are about maintaining a beautiful city. Other concerns are safety related like uneven sidewalks. Some are damage being done to people’s properties. Whether the issues are large or small, they matter to the resident’s affected. What makes these service matters especially frustrating for people is that far too often the city doesn’t provide any information on when and even if an issue will be addressed. Issues take years to be addressed. Collectively, city services are important to making our city vibrant, beautiful and livable. When city services fail, they make Mississauga less special.

The Key Types of Solutions

Solving, or even just improving, big problems typically requires tackling them on multiple fronts. To address service issues, I am making four key commitments:

To respond to all of my constituents’ concerns, and follow-up where appropriate.
To ensure the resources dedicated to city service issues matches the level of overall concern being expressed in the ward.
To push for a resident (customer) service system that allows people to more easily check the status of their issue.
To champion the creation of Resident Associations to give people a collective voice for advocating for common concerns.

Next Steps – Seven Tasks

My plan is to assess the current state of efforts, share my efforts and ensure deliverables. This will be accomplished through the following seven steps:

First, I will setup a system in my own council office to respond to the issues brought to me by residents of the ward.
Then, I will review the city’s current systems for responding to service issues in the ward and across Mississauga.
I will then categorize the issues I have heard across the ward and invite further feedback.
Next, I will identify the gaps between the city’s plans and the identified needs.
From this, I will work with city staff and council to create a priority-based set of service system tasks.
With plan in hand, I will share the proposals online and via direct engagement with residents.
Finally, I will monitor the progress of the plan’s implementation, and the results of the improvements and report back to the ward.

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Joe Horneck, City of Mississauga Councillor

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