We work with the City of Waterloo to streamline services and benefit residents on both sides of our borders. These services include fire dispatch, equipment sharing and more.
On this page:
Why we share services
We work with Waterloo to:
- identify services we share and look at ways we can streamline them to benefit residents on both sides of our borders
- maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of our resources and service delivery
- develop and complete strategic joint initiatives
- learn from our collective best practices
The joint projects we pursue align to three basic principles:
- accessibility: residents in both cities must be able to understand the purpose and benefits of the project
- accountability: each project must represent the needs of both communities and clearly identify areas of responsibility
- affordability: each project must maximize cost efficiencies where possible, without sacrificing the benefits to residents
Each project must:
- enhance the ability of either city to deliver or develop a service or program outside of its resources
- create service-level improvements, while either maintaining costs or producing savings opportunities
- provide operational and/or capital opportunities
- feature best practices of both of our organizations
Current projects
These joint projects are underway in 2020-2021:
- review the uniform speed limit of 50km/h and look at the benefit and feasibility of reducing to 40km/h
- investigate a new stormwater grant program that would enable private property owners to better manage stormwater on their properties, reducing runoff to municipal systems
- assess the impact of provincial legislation requiring the inclusion of affordable housing units in new residential development projects, and the choice for municipalities to implement such zoning
- develop an app for residents to be aware of when city streets will get cleared after a winter snow event
- stormwater management facilities risk assessment to mitigate chlorides entering drinking water through a partnership between the cities and Region of Waterloo
Ongoing services
We collaborate to improve service delivery in these ways:
- maintenance of the 20 border streets including snow removal, general upkeep, street sweeping and leaf collection
- after-hours dispatch: Kitchener takes Waterloo's public works and facility after-hour calls and offer dispatch services to reduce costs of duplication
- joint fire dispatch: Kitchener offers dispatch services to Waterloo and Cambridge for an annual fee, this includes all infrastructure, hardware, software and mapping data
- mutual aid: if a major emergency occurs and the situation cannot be contained or controlled with available resources, both cities will look to one another to provide support or coverage in needed areas
- equipment sharing to reduce duplication and costs
- Kitchener manufactures Waterloo's traffic signs
- common platform for resident engagement
- coordinated efforts and applications related to external grant opportunities from which both cities can benefit
- coordinated lobbying efforts in support of two-way, all-day GO service from Toronto to Kitchener, and high-speed rail to foster a Toronto-Waterloo corridor
- joint advertising campaigns to reduce cost of letting residents know about programs like snow and ice removal, Earth Week, Earth Hour and more
- joint purchasing through the Cooperative Purchasing Group of Waterloo Region to achieve savings on the purchase of everything from road salt to envelopes
- Waterloo Region Small Business Centre is supported through the economic development functions of both cities
- firefighter recruitment: Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph have streamlined the process for applications to reduce costs
- staff learning and development: finding opportunities to share best practices and common staff learning programs
- joint promotion of the ‘Bloom in a Box’ program, which offers a grant to homeowners toward purchase of a naturalization kit for a landscaped area to reduce stormwater runoff to municipal systems
- corporate fleet training and best practice information sharing
- common Administrative Monetary Penalty System to move adjudication of parking tickets out of the provincial court system
- joint bylaw enforcement and reciprocal support arrangements for large special eventsAlert Waterloo Region, a service that sends residents important public safety messages in the event of a large-scale emergency
- coordinate winter weather updates to ensure citizens receive consistent messages and give more web-based and social media communications.
Related projects
These projects rely on cooperation between Kitchener, Waterloo and other services in the region:
- Kitchener Public Library removed its non-resident charge and is now part of the regional reciprocal borrowing network
- both libraries share an integrated computer system that manages core activities of the customer, circulation and collection databases
- the libraries also buy some database products jointly, and participate with other library systems to provide downloadable content (e-books, e-audio and e-video)
- tourism: both cities contribute to Waterloo Region Tourism to provide tourism services to their respective communities