It’s her first official week on the job, but the Town of Collingwood’s new treasurer should be a familiar face.
For this week’s edition of People of Collingwood we spoke with Jennifer Graham, 47, treasurer for the Town of Collingwood.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I actually grew up in Collingwood. I was born here.
Q: What schools did you attend?
A: I went to Admiral Collingwood and Collingwood Collegiate Institute.
Q: Where did life take you after that?
A: At first, I went to Georgian College in Barrie. Then, I did a co-op at Goodyear which used to exist over on Mountain Road, and I was encouraged at that point to get my designation.
I attended Nippissing University in North Bay for accounting, specifically to get my accounting designation.
Q: When did you first know that numbers were your thing?
A: I've always loved numbers. Math and science have always been my favourite subjects but I had a really amazing Grade 11 accounting teacher at CCI, Mr. Dykstra. He used to play records for us when we were doing our work. He encouraged me to stick with it all.
Q: After you got your designation, where did you work?
A: I worked for Grant Thornton in North Bay. I wanted to eventually come back to this area, so I transitioned to the Barrie office before I came back to Collingwood.
Q: Why was it important for you to come back to this area?
A: I just love it. It offers everything that fits my personal interests outside of work. I like the outdoors. I love hiking and skiing and there's a lot of great community.
Also, my family. I'm the only sibling that has moved back home. I can quickly go to Toronto and visit family or go to a Blue Jays game. It's nice that you can get anywhere from Collingwood but it still offers everything here, too.
I’ve worked at Baker-Tilly for a few years as an auditing manager and I audited municipalities all across Simcoe County. I've always had municipal experience. I went to Royal Victoria Hospital as a senior accountant for two years.
But then I got pregnant, and I didn't want to drive. I have my family and I didn't want to move to Barrie.
I was offered a really exciting job at First Affiliate Holdings where I worked from 2011 to 2019, and I had my own business doing tax planning.
I started working for the Town of Collingwood in July 2019 as manager of finance, or deputy treasurer.
Q: With former town treasurer Monica Quinlan leaving, what made you want to apply for the top spot?
A: Monica was very encouraging. We worked so well together for the last two years.
I’m just in a really good stage in my life. My son is now 12. He's a lot more independent and I'm just ready for a challenge.
I feel like after five years in my manager role, it's nice to step up.
It's going to be an interesting budget season.
Q: What are some of the challenges a town treasurer faces, and what are some misconceptions out there about the job of the treasurer?
A: I think the biggest challenge right now is trying to find that balance between collecting enough taxes and getting the resources we need to provide the services to our residents.
We don’t want residents feeling they're overtaxed or that they're missing out on services, or over-delivering on others.
For our $140 million budget, only about $40 million of that is actually taxes, so I think that's a big misconception.
We work to educate on the development charges and grants, and other mechanisms and user fees.
Q: What are your hobbies?
A: Pottery is a big one right now.
I also do soap making. My family loves to ski, hike and bike. I do yoga on Thursdays.
Q: What does the future hold for you?
A: It's going to be interesting.
Over the next two to three years, the town has some really exciting projects. Immediately, is passing the 2025 budget. We’re developing our programs-and-services budget to the next level.
We’re finalizing the asset management plan. We're also going to implement a long-term strategic financial plan.
It's a lot of interesting work.
Q: How are you feeling going into that?
A: I'm excited and we're really lucky because we have a CAO (Sonya Skinner) who is so experienced with asset management. I feel like I have strong mentorship from leadership which is really helpful.
The finance team is probably one of the most important reasons why I accepted this role. The whole team is so experienced. They're amazing individuals to work with and they really know what they're doing.
Q: Is there anything else you want people in Collingwood to know about you?
A: I'm super excited about this and I'm hoping to be a really positive change and help with education of what we actually do at the town.
And I just love Collingwood, so I want to see the best for it.
For our feature People of Collingwood, we speak with interesting people who are either from or are contributing to the Collingwood community in some way, letting them tell their own stories in their own words. This feature runs on CollingwoodToday every weekend. If you’d like to nominate or suggest someone to be featured in People of Collingwood, email [email protected].
