May 28, 2019

The residents of the Township of Muskoka Lakes owe a big thank you to the Township for their actions during the recent flooding. The team led by Mayor Phil Harding and Deputy Fire Chief and Community Emergency Management Coordinator Harry Baranik consisted of Cheryl Mortimer (acting CAO), Corey Moore (Communications and Economic Development Specialist), Ken Becking (Director of Public Works) and Brad Bigrigg (Interim Fire Chief).

As well, a word of gratitude to the volunteers, other Township employees, and elected officials of the Township of Muskoka Lakes and the District of Muskoka.

The recent flooding in our region and specifically in our Township, was a devastating experience to many of our permanent and seasonal residents. As so often happens, dealing with the resulting complications brought out the best in all of you. On behalf of our members we wish to express our collective thanks.

We appreciated the informational updates brought to us by our Mayor and Councillors. We appreciated the rapid accessibility of sand bags and of the employees and volunteer citizens who spent hours filling them. We appreciated the speedy way that roads were renovated so that they could be reopened.

We especially appreciated the efforts of our mostly volunteer fire department who helped fill and distribute and in many cases place sand bags around vulnerable properties no matter the time of day or night.

We know that there is more to be done. Additional volunteer hours will be donated to remove the sandbags. Township and District staff will need to repair municipal infrastructure and deal with the additional amount of debris headed for the garbage dump.

For all of these things and more, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Liz Denyar
President – 0n behalf of the Board and membership of the Muskoka Ratepayers