1) Why are you running?
My reasons and goals are likely your goals: an inclusive, fair and affordable city that teems with small businesses, and young families that has the ability to service our residents and their needs. To reach these goals we have to create a vision for where we want to be 5, 10, and 15 years into the future. We need to immediately tackle the issues we face, if we continue to show a lack of action and willingness to take ownership of things like building housing of all types, homelessness, addiction and taxation, we will continue to idle along as we have been for the past 16 years.
2) Are there any steps municipalities can take to ease the cost of living concerns? If so, what measures would you support?
There absolutely are things municipalities can do. First among those things is taxation. Owen Sound is taxed much more than surrounding municipalities and far more than comparable municipalities; this goes for our high user fees as well. We pay far more for policing, waste disposal, recreation services, water rates, etc that all add to the cost of living. Additionally, for a city our size, we seem to have an oversized staff and a bloated budget. This is something the next council will have to deal with, and hopefully have the guts to make the hard decisions to get us back in line.
Measures I would support are ending tax and fee breaks for already wealthy property speculators and developers in whatever form they take, including development charge breaks (which evidence proves do not live up to their sales pitch) everyone needs to pay their fair share. Growth should pay for growth leading to a continuous cycle, that cycle has been broken by the current council.
3) What are your ideas for economic development in your municipality?
Let’s forget about large-scale manufacturing, that’s never going to return for numerous reasons. We have been able to attract some small-scale manufacturing to our city, we need to continue to promote and actively recruit Owen Sound to these start-ups and leading-edge tech businesses.
But what we really need are more people, particularly in the healthcare field. We need this not just for the population that is already here but for our future population. In the face of the fact that our population over the age of 65 is projected to continue to grow in the next two decades by 50%, I’m left wondering who will service these individuals. Unemployment is at record lows, with a job vacancy rate to match, this is not something that is going to change anytime soon.
To attract young professionals, families, and new Canadians we need more housing of all kinds. More housing = more people = more jobs = more economic development.
4) Do you think the municipality has a role to play in the recruitment and retention of physicians and other healthcare workers?
Absolutely. Owen Sound should be an easy sell to anyone looking for a safe, beautiful place to live and raise a family given our geographic location and outstanding natural environment. We need to find out why we are not attractive to the healthcare professionals we want to recruit and fix it. To do this we need to recruit those in our community who had careers in the health field and give them the tools they need to bring more healthcare workers to our area, who better to sell our community to those workers than those who were those workers?
5) What steps could municipalities take to help get more housing built that you support?
When we speak of housing it’s a good idea to start with a definition of the development sector, housing encompasses many different types: private for-profit, non-profit, attainable, affordable and cooperative housing. Increased development of all of those sectors is needed to end up with a balanced mix of housing, which can then serve all members of our community regardless of their income levels. The ability for everyone to live affordably contributes to a sense of community, security, comfort, and will provide the basic needs that people require to be successful.
The Association of Municipalities Ontario recently released a 20-page report that outlines 90 recommendations that all levels of government and developers should consider implementing. Owen Sound should implement the policies from that report that relate to the municipal level.
There are no easy solutions to this problem and it needs to be tackled in a collaborative way.
Owen Sound can look at ways to speed up the approval, planning and licensing process which would send a clear message to developers of all types that we are easy to work with and they can have a greater sense of certainty that their projects will see approval.
We can send this message by giving a group like Glassworks the little they are asking the city for. As soon as you see a coop housing project, that wants to privately build the type of housing we need, held up by council you have to wonder what message it is they want to broadcast about development in Owen Sound to would-be developers. It’s definitely not a welcoming one. Owen Sound needs to become the place “where you want to build”.
6) Should the city do more to regulate short-term rentals, such as AirBNBs?
Well, currently Owen Sound does nothing so anything would be an improvement. I’ve spoken to residents that have had the misfortune of having an Airbnb open near them, I’ve heard their frustrations with respect to the lack of action and my heart goes out to them and I want to take up this challenge on their behalf.
First, we need to admit that banning short-term rentals is likely impossible and it is not the hill we should pick to die on. Instead, I see regulation in the form of licensing, with expectations for those who operate these properties laid out clearly, along with the penalties they can expect should they be unable to fulfil their obligations, is the best course of action. The key here is that we have to follow through with enforcement as the evidence has shown that the cities that have had success with regulation follow it with enforcement.