What I will work on, and how.

Why I am running

Some people run for elected office because they want to be Politicians. Other people run because they want to serve their community. I am not running for the job of Ward 4 Councillor because I am interested in ticking a box. I am running to finish major projects like keeping healthcare in Fort Erie, to make sure the new Zoning By-law makes the new Official Plan work for you, and because there is work I have not finished.

I am running because I love this Town. A place that keeps the magic of somewhere lost in time while growing into the 21st century. A place that sees its seniors as its founders and its families as its future. A place where people of all ages, with local access to good jobs, goods and services, belong.

From healthcare to managing growth. From building a community for all ages to growing our tree canopy for future residents. I want Fort Erie to be all that it can be.

Douglas Memorial's role has been downgraded twice already. It stopped functioning as a full-service hospital and emergency department, becoming an urgent care facility in 2009. In 2022, the overnight hours were cut, so the doors open at 10 am and close at 8 pm. Hours have been cut when staff have not been available.

When the South Niagara Hospital opens in Niagara Falls in 2028, Niagara Health intends to close what remains, here and in Port Colborne. That would leave a town of around 37,000 people, on its way to 52,500 by 2051, roughly 25 kilometres from the nearest emergency department. Picture a bad night with a child, or an elderly parent who no longer drives, and that drive at the end of it. Using the Santis Health and Stucor work the Town has commissioned, I want to build a community health services corporation that keeps around the clock care available in Fort Erie.

I spent a career inside Ontario's healthcare system as a policy advisor, so I know which doors open and which ones only look like doors. Barring a change of heart from the province about a local hospital, this takes knowledge of the system, the politics at every level, and plain persistence.

Decisions about your street should not be made by people who have never driven down it. The Province has shown little patience for local democracy, the Region will have an appointed Chair rather than an elected one, and a bigger shake-up is expected in the coming term.

Having worked in two Regions that functioned well, Metro Toronto and York, I have a balanced view of what sound governance can do when responsibilities are split sensibly. Doing it properly in the 21st century takes background work: evidence, analysis, public consultation, research on best practices and recommendations that people can actually discuss. It does not have to take forever. It takes people who know what they are doing.

I will keep pushing back on sloganeering about saving money from people who cannot tell you why everything costs so much in Niagara in the first place.

Fort Erie manages its money well. The real problem is what keeps getting piled onto your property tax bill. Services that should be paid for out of income and sales taxes are landing on homeowners here instead, and a fixed income does not stretch to cover it.

It is time for municipalities and residents to be louder about the injustice of property taxes covering costs that really belong to the province. I will also press for a review of new approaches to the governance of essential services such as water.

Growth is coming whether we like it or not. What it looks like on your street is still a choice. Homes designed to suit the neighbourhood sell better and sit better beside the houses that were already there, and they spare everyone the fight that comes with the alternative.

The new Zoning By-law has to make the new Official Plan work in practice. That means development inside the urban boundary that respects community vetted plans, and continued advocacy to get senior levels of government back into the business of affordable and attainable housing they left in the mid 1990s.

Viable towns attract businesses of every size, which is how families and older adults get a choice of work close to home. Partnerships with the provincial and federal governments matter when the goal is bringing industry from around the world to Fort Erie, and I want the Town positioned aggressively as the obvious place to land.

We also need to grow tourism through the Destination Niagara initiative so that seasonal businesses have something to build on, and to keep steady municipal relations across the border in a volatile international climate.

Ask a parent here where their kids go after school, or a seventy year old where they swim in February, and you will hear the problem. Service clubs and Town staff have done remarkable work in coordinating recreation facilities and services. But there isn't a plan to sustain the work going forward. And Fort Erie is changing. Current families want quality services closer to home and new families wonder where the services are. The Town shouldn't depend on the strength of traditional partners just because … and their generosity should not be the whole plan.

We have a Parks and Open Space Master Plan. We need a Facilities and Recreation Master Plan to go with it: an inventory of Town facilities and how they are used, real engagement of the service clubs who operate them, an assessment of the social, recreational and cultural needs of a growing population, and a strategy to meet them. Kids, youth, families and older adults, served on purpose.

A main street either feels alive or it does not, and people can tell within a block. The new Community Incentive Program has to reach the parts of Town that have never had improvement money, and come back to places like Ridgeway, whose businesses can now apply once again.

I am a strong proponent of the three Business Improvement Areas working more closely together. Together they can leverage provincial and federal funding that none of them reaches alone. Our downtown business owners have the ideas, the products and the love of community. They need the Town to find them support.

The lake, the dunes, the creeks and the tree canopy are the reason many of us are here. Protecting them while the province pushes development is the hardest balancing act on Council. The Climate Change Action Plan is new, and its results so far are real: grant funded tree planting, EV chargers across Town, and community gardens run with local food providers and the Library.

The Tree By-law now protects heritage and at risk species as well as the general canopy, and it will need defending against the pressures that push back on it. Embedding these ideas in everyday awareness is what keeps Fort Erie green.

Sidewalks, streetlights and a road that does not rattle your car are not luxuries. They are what makes a street safe to walk after dark and easy to live on. The Asset Management Financing Strategy keeps money flowing to roads, water and wastewater, and staff were honest about how big the gap still is.

Parks, trails and roadways are most inviting when they are clear of debris and ploughed in the winter. The past year brought real improvement, particularly in snow removal, and that has to hold.

Transit needs continued follow up. Fort Erie residents, especially those using specialised transit, have been clear about the problems since the move to the Niagara Transit Commission. Advocacy has to continue until the Town gets full value for a significantly larger bill.

Most neighbourhood problems, from speeding to an untended yard, get solved faster when people know how things work and who to call. With many new residents arriving, that kind of everyday explaining is part of how we stay the third kindest community in Canada.

Ward 4 is proud of a unique piece of Canadian history. Many residents descend from United Empire Loyalists, and from people who fought at the Battle of Ridgeway during the Fenian Raids in 1866, the battle that pushed foot dragging politicians toward the British North America Act and, not incidentally, Canada. The ward was part of the Underground Railroad and home to many Black families who fled slavery in the United States. The Fort Erie Museum sits in the old Bertie Township Hall, built in 1874.

It is heritage red brick homes, charming cottages, stately mansions, classic bungalows and some low rise apartments. It is provincial wetlands, conservation lands, kilometres of lakefront, the dunes, a high water table and Oakhill Forest, where shallow earth over bedrock sends water overland. It is deer, wild turkeys, birds, the trees, the sunsets and the thunder over Thunder Bay.

And it is a quaint, gorgeous downtown that has struggled since the pandemic and refuses to give up. It has reinvented itself over the decades and will do it again. The task is keeping its character through the transition.