By Emily Stonehouse

There’s a viral trend circulating online these days about throwing it back to 2016. While the year may seem in the not-so-distant rearview mirror, I think it came as a startling realization that it was a decade ago.

The reasoning behind the trending topic is that 2016 is remembered as a simpler time. It was a season before reels dominated Instagram, when Barack Obama was the President of the United States, and the average cost of a home was under $500,000.

There was a movement around sharing food pictures online, ‘influencers’ was a relatively unknown term, and life seemed like it came at a slower pace.

When looking back through our own archives, major topics of concern in early 2016 that hovered in our headlines consisted of the closure of the Welcome Centre on Highway 35, funding around the Fish Hatchery up for debate, and the County working towards a 3.85 per cent tax hike.

Honestly, looking back through our pages, not much has changed in the past decade. We still have many of the same contributors, and while staffing and layout has shifted, the priorities remain aligned.

I am on the fence about whether that’s a good thing or not.

Dysart recently approved a 4.98 per cent tax increase. And while Mayor Fearrey has pushed to keep it below that five per cent, keeping the increase “palatable” for tax payers, you can’t help but wonder if perhaps you need to spend money to make money.

If we look back over the past ten years, while there are notable new businesses and a smattering of novel events, not too much has changed.

And maybe to some, that’s a good thing. We’ve stuck to the status quo. Our taxes remain within reach, our community keeps it consistent.

Perhaps that’s the priority. In a community that struggles financially, it does make sense.

But it’s very challenging to do anything new with the same model applied. We keep it at a steady rate, but as a result, the pie in the sky projects get the chopping block.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if municipal staff and councillors could prioritize budget items through a departmental rotation. Maybe one year, the roads department gets the big boost. Major projects are tackled, bridges are finally built. The other departments would get their bare needs met, but their pie in the sky projects would come during the next season.

Perhaps the following budget go-around, it’s time to feature recreation. We as taxpayers funnel our energies and our monies towards projects and initiatives that make our community vibrant; an arts centre, a recreational facility, perhaps even, dare I say, a community pool.

When we scrape the surface of community needs in an effort to stay within a palatable threshold, it limits our ability to move past 2016. Sticking to the status quo is beneficial through one lens, but if we have dreams of growth, maybe it’s time for a different perspective.

So then when we look in our rearview mirror at 2026, we can see the progress we’ve made, and be proud of how far we’ve come as a community.