Ward 9 · London, Ontario
I’m fed up. I think you are too. It’s time to do something about it.
We need a council that listens to us, instead of rubber-stamping whatever city staff recommend. Fiscally-responsible stewards of our tax dollars. Government that does less, but does it well.
Does it shrink your tax bill? Does it leave you freer? Does it actually work? If the answer to all three isn’t yes, it doesn’t belong on the agenda.
Council voted itself almost a 40% raise for the next term. Property taxes have risen about 7.5% per year over the current term. The fix: a direct-democracy bylaw that ties councillor pay to the property tax levy. Drafted in public. Read it, suggest changes, watch the audit trail.
When the arterials flow, your neighbourhood stays quiet. Wonderland, Wharncliffe, Commissioners, Colonel Talbot. The way Lambeth, Byron, and Riverbend get their streets back is by making sure those arterials carry the traffic they were designed to carry. Every mobility vote gets the same test from me: does it preserve the corridor’s job, or push the spillover into someone’s neighbourhood?
Overnight break-ins keep happening in Ward 9. A councillor can’t assign patrol cars. What a councillor can do is two real things: fight for police resources that match the documented break-in pattern, and push council’s Police Service Board appointees to make recurring hotspots a strategic priority for the Service.
City Hall keeps adding rules and fees and almost never takes any away. I can’t repeal the pile alone. What I can do is make decisions based on a framework on every regulation that comes to council: does it prevent specific harm, are the costs worth it, would it survive a four-year defence, and does the regulatory environment net grow or shrink? And I’ll keep pushing for a council that subtracts as often as it adds.
My thoughts on Ward 9, and beyond.
A little about me
Third generation farmer and lifelong Lambeth resident.
Advocate for fitness and nutrition.
I’ve been involved in past London elections and I follow politics at every level closely.
Drop your email and I’ll send you the occasional update on new writing, what I’m hearing from Ward 9, and ways to help if you want to. No spam. No selling your info. Ever.