Dream Sutton

Town of Sutton consults citizens on what they want to see in their community

The Town of Sutton is looking for citizen participation to establish a comprehensive plan for the village’s downtown core. Photo courtesy of the Town of Sutton.

By Taylor McClure 
Townships’ Daily News Bits 
CIDI 99.1 FM 

Between May and November 2022, the Town of Sutton, with the help of consultant  Julie Lavallée, organized brainstorming sessions with different target groups, public meetings, and a public interactive exhibition over four weekends in the fall as a part of the Dream Sutton project “Village core: Establishing a comprehensive plan.”

The goal of the discussions and consultations was to gather the opinions and input of Sutton citizens on the issues that concern them and the types of projects they want to see happen in their community. 

Over 430 citizens participated in the consultation process and a number of citizens published their comments and proposals on the Dream Sutton online platform. The results have been compiled in a 56-page summary report. 

With a population of over 4,000 people, the town has now launched a survey to encourage more citizen participation. The survey is open to any Sutton resident over 15 years old and the deadline to submit is Dec. 31. 

“The survey comes after nine months of work that has been done by the town and a consultant. We met 430 people face to face, spending not a couple of minutes, but sometimes hours with people at the museum and in meetings talking about different topics that concern the town and citizens,” explained Robert Benoît, mayor of Sutton. 

Benoît added that these topics mainly focused on Main Street, Maple Street, the former Filtex factory site, the John-Sleeth building, amongst others.  

“What kind of community services do we want?, what kind of walking paths?, what kind of special projects that people came up with? So, we took everything and the idea was to have a comprehensive plan for the core of the city and not to look at it specifically one by one, but taking a more comprehensive view so that we have a global plan,” he mentioned.

For us, 430 people was not enough, Benoît emphasized. 

“We wanted to have people that didn’t come to the interactive exhibition and people that have ideas. That’s why we want to have as many people as possible fill in this survey. We’re pretty happy about the results at this point in time because what I hear is that people are really interested in giving their input,” he said. 

The survey is divided into seven parts and it has 47 questions covering the key concerns and projects that came out of the consultations and discussions. 

“I’ll give you a simple example. For Main Street, we asked people do we want to remove all of the parking spaces between the two railroad crossings and replace them somewhere else? Do we want to have more trees on the main road? A bike path for security reasons? Do we want to reduce the speed?,” explained Benoît. 

The town will reveal the results of the survey in Feb. 2023.

“But this is not the end of Dream Sutton, it is just the start. We will have more input from the citizens, but at the same time we have a lot of work to do, a lot of studies to be done,” noted Benoît. 

After presenting the results, the town’s first task is to focus on the former Filtex factory site, a project that it announced in its 2023 budget.

“This is an easier one because what has come out of the consultation, not the survey but the consultation, is the option about having parking spaces. We can also have washrooms for tourists in the spring, summer, or fall; especially when people come in and they don’t know where to go. (…) That is the project we have at this point in time that needs to be approved by council,” mentioned Benoît.

Benoît emphasized that the most important result that has emerged from Dream Sutton is the “enthusiasm of citizens.”

“I’ve been living here for 30 years and it’s the first time the citizens can give their input not only on one topic, but several topics. (…) People were enthusiastic about giving their own input, but also about their own projects. Some people had projects from 15 years ago, projects that didn’t go anywhere,” he highlighted.  

To consult the Dream Sutton summary report. 

To consult the Dream Sutton online platform. 

To fill out the survey.

For more information on Dream Sutton “Village core: establishing a comprehensive plan.”

Listen to the full interview below: