EMBRUN — Russell Township council has backed a broader accessibility push that includes improving accessibility at municipal events, developing more accessibility knowledge among staff and doing more to tell residents and businesses about programs that already exist. Council also received a request to put training for two Accessibility Advisory Committee members into the 2027 budget process. Administration said that request will return to council during budget deliberations.
Coun. Lisa Deacon supported additional training but questioned how the Township could make sure the knowledge remained useful after individual volunteers left the committee. “We definitely need more training, I think, and information and knowledge on how to do accessibility well,” she said. “So that’s not what I’m questioning.”
“How can we ensure, especially for investing in training for committee members, that it is impactful for the municipality long term?” Deacon asked. She suggested council could consider agreed learning outcomes or establish in advance how newly acquired knowledge would be applied to municipal work. Deacon also noted that the training would take place during a new committee term, which reduced some of her concern about investing near the end of the current mandate.
Mayor Mike Tarnowski said the question was worth carrying into council’s coming discussions about committee structure. “The reality is, obviously, we can’t force committee members to stay on once they’re trained, because they’re volunteer positions,” he said. Tarnowski compared the issue to the question employers face when investing in employees and said council would ultimately have to weigh the value of the expenditure against what the municipality gained from it.
“When we deliberate over budget, when we look at the cost versus the return on that cost, I think that’s where us as a council have to decide of the value and to ensure that there are some sort of outcomes that are associated with that,” Tarnowski said. Coun. Marc Lalonde said choosing the right training was another important part of that calculation. “There’s a lot of stuff being offered on a lot of fronts,” Lalonde said, adding that the objective was to choose something relevant to the committee’s work.
Coun. Charles Armstrong suggested council also examine whether the training could be delivered more economically. “How the course is delivered can also affect the cost,” Armstrong said. He suggested other municipalities in the United Counties of Prescott and Russell might want similar accessibility training, potentially allowing municipalities to arrange group instruction, remote delivery or some form of shared-cost arrangement.
Lalonde told council the committee had also received considerable public feedback during the Township’s 2026 Meet Me event and thanked staff for creating questions that made it easy for residents to participate. “We got a lot of good feedback,” Lalonde said. “We’re just hoping that all that feedback will be recognized and used by staff to help with the next event.”
One issue raised by residents was improving accessible entrances to local businesses, and Deacon noted that the Township’s Community Improvement Plan includes assistance for accessibility ramps. Administration replied that there had been no requests at that point. It also said that although the overall improvement program was promoted, its accessibility component was not being promoted separately.
Deacon said she had identified businesses that might benefit from direct outreach and described connecting those businesses with the existing program as a possible “quick and easy win.” “It seems like the pieces are there, they just haven’t quite connected,” she said. Tarnowski said Township community-development staff could make those connections once the information was passed along.
Armstrong told council that encouraging accessibility improvements would likely require more active promotion of the Community Improvement Plan and referred not only to entrance ramps but also to other accessibility improvements in older buildings. Tarnowski said communication appeared to be a common theme in the discussion and suggested the Township could do more to tell residents about accessibility work and services that already exist. “I think that it could not hurt us to promote what is being done and that we’re continuously looking at improving accessibility,” he said.
Administration said it would look at how best to promote those services. Council approved recommendations to promote and incorporate accessibility at Township events and to build accessibility expertise among municipal staff, while the proposed training for two Accessibility Advisory Committee members remains a 2027 budget request that will return during budget deliberations. The approved measures and the budget request arose from the Accessibility Advisory Committee’s recommendations considered at the Sept. 14 meeting.