When you contact the City about a broken streetlight, a permit, or a missed pickup, you deserve to know two things. Someone is on it. And when it will be done.

 

That belief shaped one of my first acts of this Council term. At our very first meeting of the 2022-2026 term, on January 25, 2023, I introduced a Member Motion directing staff to develop a Service Charter for Richmond Hill.

 

Why a charter? Because good intentions are not standards. A Service Charter puts the City’s commitments to you in writing: clear timelines on service standards and tangible deliverables you can actually measure us against. It changes the conversation from “we will get to it” to “here is what you can expect, and here is when.” Accountable. Open. Transparent. Those words appear in plenty of speeches. A charter turns them into obligations.

 

Staff took the time to do this properly, looking at how requests move through the City and where residents most often felt left waiting without answers. In January 2025, the Service Charter launched. Commitments made. Commitments delivered.

 

What does this mean for you in practice? When you submit a service request, you now have a published standard for how quickly the City should respond and what a resolution looks like. If we fall short, you have something concrete to point to. That keeps staff focused, and it keeps your Council honest.

 

You don’t win trust in local government through slogans. You win it when the small things get done on time, the way we said they would. The charter is a promise with a deadline attached, and I intend to keep watching how it performs. Attentive service is not a courtesy. It is what you pay for, and it is what you should receive.