After a year of Covid-19, Saint John and the region are at a Crossroads

We’ve all spent the first part of this year reading “Year in Review” stories about 2020 — the year that brought us COVID-19. For that reason, I must apologize in advance for adding yet another one to the pile. However, our City is at an inflection point right now, and I think it’s important to look back before we look forward to the next leg in our growth journey together.

The City of Saint John experienced the pandemic, the lockdown, zones yellow through red — and sometimes peach, alongside Saint John’s citizens. As a group, we worried, navigated the ever-changing rules, and figured out how to be safe at work/work from home/homeschool our kids. We enjoyed our various bubbles and learned new things like how to grow a garden/how to bake bread/how to play guitar,/how to do a curbside pickup.

The pandemic arrived in Saint John 52 weeks ago, and we went into lockdown knowing we were prepared for what would come in meaningful and concrete ways. That’s because our City has been building resilience into our planning and our processes for the past four years. We’ve been focusing on growth, creating long-term financial plans, trimming our spending, establishing reserves and rainy-day funds, and more.

You could say we’ve been preparing for COVID since 2016.

Saint Johners have been with us on this journey. I’ve tried to be candid about our challenges and give people the tools they need to understand the context of every tough decision we’ve had to make.

We made big promises — both to voters and our partners at the Province — that we would resolve our financial situation and position ourselves for growth. To their credit, the City staff and Council came together to deliver on those promises. We learned how to communicate about complex issues, be decisive, and act quickly to achieve results.

I’m so proud that even while the world news was full of headlines about COVID and not much else, our City was masks-up and making news about budgets, fiscal responsibility, and good planning.

In the middle of a global pandemic, this City — our City — restructured our people, our resources, and our thinking about what is possible…and, in the process, built ourselves a path to sustainability.

Now we’re starting to see the next chapter come into focus.

We’ve come together as a region with Envision Saint John, and the harmonization of our economic development initiatives is underway. We have a path forward on the new school and community hub for the central peninsula. Funding announcements in the millions have been made for Fundy Quay and a major sewerage project, and our government representatives are working together for this city like never before.

All of this has happened because we’ve built a strong foundation.

But.

Pivoting to focus on what comes next is going to take courage, risk-management, and strong relationships. This will be a challenge for us because we’ve been burdened with a scarcity mindset for so long. We are used to competing with each other for resources, jobs, and opportunities. The muscles of collaboration haven’t been used in a while.

It’s going to feel weird, but we owe it to ourselves to give it a try. We can’t squander the effort that has gone into creating this opportunity we now have.

Leadership is critical.

In The upcoming municipal, I am expecting candidates to continue down this exciting path, accelerating our momentum and our optimism — We cannot slow to a crawl because we’ve lost our focus and discipline. We need to carefully choose our next set of municipal leaders, selecting for the most collaborative, for those who want to build on what we’ve accomplished, and those who are focused on removing barriers so we can keep growing.

But leadership doesn’t just happen around the council table.

It happens around the boardroom table and around the kitchen table too.

The region we want will only come to fruition through collaboration and a focus on thinking big. We need to find ways to help each other. To join in the effort to remove the barriers that stand in our way. To be champions for each other’s successes.

So much is possible, but we need to make a very real pivot in 2021. We need to pivot away from a scarcity mindset to a collaboration mindset.

Recovery from COVID isn’t just getting back what we had. It’s about owning our new reality and growing in new and wonderful ways.

That new reality means that we now live in a world defined by physical separation. But the irony is that how successfully we recover depends on how well we come together as a region.

One set of priorities. One message from many voices. One region.

Over the next 60 days, I’m going to keep reminding us not just to choose collaborative leaders but to BE collaborative leaders — because that is what is standing between us and our dreams.