Shellee Evans

Meet Shellee Evans - Director of Community Services

As you might anticipate, planning for the future is a "critical mission" for a town.

Shellee Evans started life as a farmer's daughter in the Spencerville area. She attended St. Lawrence College in Kingston where she studied Advertising and Public Relations. From there she picked up experience at Sir Sanford Fleming College (Peterborough Campus), the Township of West Carleton and the Canadian 4H Coucil before her family moved to the Perth area.

The family has a farm with horses and cattle. Shellee landed a part time position with the Town of Perth as a Community Development Officer (CDO). This has evolved into a full time position.

Prior to becoming Director of Community Services, Shellee was the Community Development Officer. What is a Community Development Officer? Shellee tells of conferences where CDOs tried to define their task, and finally agreed on "information mover" as a short summary of thier primary task. CDOs are sometimes known as Economic Development Officers (EDO). It is revealing that the Town of Perth had settled on CDO, since a CDO is tasked to focus as much on community as economics.

Although the position does focus on existing business retention and expansion, there also is emphasis placed on new business initiatives in manufacturing, retail and individual businesses.

Some current initiatives being undertaken that Shellee is very much involved with are:

• OSTAR - Rural Economic Development (RED)

  The RED program is offered by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs as a component of the Ontario Small Town and Rural (OSTAR) Development Initiative - a two-part, $600 million initiative launched in 2000 to assist rural Ontario.

  The RED program aims to remove barriers to economic growth in rural Ontario by promoting a diversified business climate; exploring new products and new markets; creating a climate for long-term job growth; and investing in technologies and sectors that contribute to economic development in rural Ontario. Project applications that are recommended by the panel are forwarded to the Minister for his consideration.

  The Town of Perth has made application for a $524,300 grant from OSTAR initiative for development of the Perth Market and Community Square Project in the Tay Basin. Included in this initiative would be a monument to "Big Ben"and a covered stage. This would turn the area around the current Glass Palace where the Farmer's Market is held during the summer into a multi-purpose area where staged events could be held

  UPDATE: The Perth Market and Community Square - a $1,000,00 project to update the Tay Basin was launched on 31 January 1003. An OSTAR grant of $446,832 was delivered to the town hall to kick off the launch. Plans include a year round farmer's market to be housed in the current Crystal place, water fountain, outdoor rink, information centre and performing arts stage.

  As a lasting tribute, Perth's Chamber of Commerce has committed to erecting an arresting bronze statue of Ian Millar (Big Ben's owner and rider) and Big Ben of Millar Brooke Farm in a picturesque park setting along the banks of the Tay River not far from Millar's home and Ben's final resting place. The life-size statue will depict Ian and Ben in full flight over a 5 and-a-half foot jump.

• Perth's Secondary Plan

  After many years of discussion as to which way future development should happen in Perth, Council passed a motion on March 27th 2001 to begin the Secondary Plan Study for the lands north of Hwy. 7.

  This plan calls for expansion of Perth into a 200 acre location north of Hwy #7. Development will include both commercial and residential construction.

• Hotel

  Although Perth has many attractive motels and Bed and Breakfast places in the area, it does not have a Hotel. This proves to be a disadvantage if conferences, trade shows or training sessions are to be held in town.

  To this end, the Town is looking to attract a hotel to develop a destination hotel in the downtown area. Construction has started on a hotel overlooking the Stewart Park in Downtown Perth.

• Industrial Park Development

  Perth has plans for further development of its Industrial Park. Current facilities include:

  Available Land:	40+acres at $15,000/acre non-serviced, $22,000/acre serviced.
  Services:	Natural Gas, Municipal water and sewer, 3 phase power, street lights, fire hydrants
  Features:	Access to major roadways, rail services, nearby domestic and international airports, deep water ports and waterways, hydro-electric power and integrated fibre-optic telecommunications.

  Shellee is looking for manufacturing opportunities for this space.

• Virtual Perth

  This is an exciting development also know as GISPAL (GIS=Geographical Information Systems, PAL= Public Access Link). This development is carried out by CGIS in Perth.

  CGIS is a corporation that specializes in Municipal Geographic Information Systems. CGIS operates as a Systems Integrator providing a one-stop shopping opportunity for a broad range of clients in both the public and the private sectors

  The idea is to place basic information about Perth against a base map of the town. As a simple example, if you want to know where a particular business is located, you can pop it up against a street map of Perth. It is expected that this system will be made available in information kiosks in late spring of 2003.

Shellee Evans can be contacted at:

Ms. Shellee R. Evans
Director of Community Services
The Corporation of the Town of Perth
80 Gore Street East
Perth, ON K7H 1H9
email: sevans@town.perth.on.ca
Tel: (613)267-3770 Fax: (613)267-5635
Website: http://www.town.perth.on.ca

See also:

Community Development