Essex council will debate the future of its phragmites management program on Monday night, while looking into the prospect of a regional program with the County of Essex.
County council recently passed a motion calling upon mayor's to go back to their municipalities and have discussion whether they want to upload phragmites management to the county.
Mayor Sherry Bondy says they don't have enough information to make a decision, and adds currently the town offers a high level of maintenance.
"We do the roadside mowing, we do spraying when we can, we also have a mapping system where we can map where the phragmites are with our GPS to track the progress of what's happening," she said. "So before we look at doing a regional phragmites program, and giving over our autonomy, we want to make sure that the county is going to do what we're doing, and even more."
She says she plans on raising the question of how much the town spends annually on phragmites control.
"This is one of those items that the town and the county, if we're going to get ahead of this, we're going to have to look at adding more money into our budget for this," Bondy said.
"If we want to have a robust drainage system, we need to make sure that phragmites is is out of the way so that when we have those major storm events, our drain system works."
Bondy says one of the major complaints in the town surrounds the drainage systems.
"We want to maintain our drains, we want to be as proactive with our drainage system as we can so that when the major flooding events happen, our drains are moving smoothly, and with phragmites there it's very challenging," she said.
Bondy says council is also expecting a report back on flooding highlighting what the town is doing, what further needs to be done moving forward.