April 2014
| Business World Magazine | 125
W
hen it comes to infrastructure issues – and counseling other mu-
nicipality leaders on how to be efficient in the face of myriad com-
plex challenges – George Elliott gets positively profound.
“There is hope,” he said. “Cities have extremely long lives.
“They’re going to be here for hundreds of years. There is hope that you can
establish a city system of infrastructure that is sustainable and can be in place for
the long term.”
A relatively recent addition to the city of Cambridge’s staff of departmental
leaders as the commissioner of transportation and public works, Elliott knows of
what he speaks.
He’s got a wall full of civil engineering street cred from Lakehead University
in Thunder Bay and held senior municipal positions in North Bay and Kirkland
Lake before arriving in Cambridge in 2010. He was elevated to his current role
a year later and has since been part of an ongoing shift in the planning paradigm
that’s positioned the city to get ahead of issues it had trailed for years.
“It took us probably 70 years to get into this jackpot of a problem, and we’ve
been able to get it turned around in a forecasted 20 years,” he said. “It may take 20
to 25 years to turn your city around, but there is the hope you can do it. It can be
done.”
Elliott and the city’s director of engineering, Yogesh Shah, are the incum-
bent driving forces these days of a proactive approach toward water and sewer
