Marcia Wallace, RPP

Name: Marcia Wallace

Title: Chief Administrative Officer for Prince Edward County

Date: May 25, 2020

1) Where is your attention focused as a planner as we look towards recovery? 
 
I lead a rural community with a rich agricultural history and a tremendous tourism draw. Before COVID-19, we were embarking on LEAN process improvements and a refresh of our Official Plan. Now as we look to recovery, those activities are almost “front line” needs. Having a responsive and effective process of decision making and clear vision for the type of growth we want to see and where is critical. The business community can’t tolerate the expensive delays, and I think the community wants some predictability of what is coming.
 
Before coming to Prince Edward County, I worked as an ADM with the Province of Ontario. Finding ways to transform and improve service delivery – focusing on the outcomes not just the outputs – threaded through a lot of my past experience. That has become very tangible for me as I experience COVID-19 in the municipal sector. As planners look towards recovery, whether in the private sector or the public sector, we need that transformational mindset. Markets are changing, and assumptions about what people want are changing. The problems facing communities are shifting, and at the same time, compounding because we didn’t outrun the challenges we already had, like climate changed impacts. Now we all need to step back, look at the plans we were pushing, and reassess if that’s the right way to go.  
 
2) What opportunities are you seeing to do things better or that have come about as a result of COVID-19? How do we begin to get there?
 
I believe planners are uniquely positioned to facilitate change. There are big questions about how we use public space, what density means with physical distance, how we leverage a “build back better” standard to the work that has been stopped and is restarting again. I’m incredibly optimistic. If you have innovative ideas and are not afraid to put in the work, there is opportunity for planners in municipalities everywhere.
 
We need to start by listening to what people are afraid of and what problems businesses are facing to survive. Solutions will need to be reflective of context. I find we are all looking to the province or the federal government or public health for guidance. And yes, they all have standards we need to pay attention to and advice to share. But planning is always done best when you look at what is around you. What strengths can you leverage? How do you repurpose money, resources, programs to achieve different outcomes? Who can you bring together that hasn’t been traditionally talking?
 
I’m hopeful to see farmers talking to food security advocates. To see businesses partnering around common branding and sourcing of materials. Planners working across disciplines to creatively reimagine the rules that govern us now. These are muscles few of us have flexed before, but they are there. We just need to use them.
 
3) Where are we resilient in our communities and where do you think we need to build more resiliency as a province and/or country?
 
Upper-level governments have to support the municipal sector. I know we were the last to receive funding because it was expected we could absorb the changes better than business or residents. But as we head towards fall and start to budget for 2021, cash flow challenges are turning into budget shortfalls. This is especially true for larger cities that have for too long been depended on unsustainable user-fee type revenue sources for major infrastructure and services (e.g. transit).
 
In terms of community resiliency, we need to hardwire some of the new partnerships and creative thinking that evolved in a crisis and make sure it has staying power. Planners should rethink past assumptions and practices. Who is at the table when decisions are made? What process efficiencies can be retained so we spend the effort where it makes the greatest difference to the outcome? Where should we be retaining the creative ways we made things more inclusive when our tried and true approaches to consultation didn’t work?
 
Planners lead. We guide decision-makers. I challenge all of us to step up.