Sudbury Ward 2: Christel Brandle Says It’s Time to Bring the Voice Back to the Communities

The municipal election is coming up soon, October 26th, which is a Monday. Everyone, get out and vote. Do your part. Have your say and help shape your community and city's future,(...) no matter where you live in Northern Ontario.

Today, in the studio, we have Crystal Brandle from Ward 2. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thank you for having me. So, Ward 2 covers(...) Beaver Lake, Worthington, Whitefish,(...) Fairbanks, Naughton, Lively, and does it dip into Copper Cliff? Copper Cliff as well, yes. Okay. So, the border is going to be sort of like the Big Nickel? Very much so, yes. Very much so. Probably up to Naring Hill. Where's Naring Hill? Outside of Worthington. Oh. It's a little past Worthington. Yeah, okay. Yes. It's just under 800 square kilometers of territory. Of territory. Okay. It's a large area, yes.

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What's given you the drive to throw your hat in the ring for... Councillor? Well, I truly believe in democracy. Yeah. And I felt what happened after our last election(...) didn't really fall under what democracy should be. I believe in elected position people should be elected to. And I felt by at least putting my name into the hat this year that we would bring democracy back to Ward 2, that we would have an election and that somebody would be elected to the position. That being said, Confucius says, "Watch what you wish for," because now we have five people running in Ward 2, which again, thank you for democracy. People are gotten out and they've said something and they've stepped up to the plate and put their name in the hat, which I'm very impressed about. Yeah, I noticed some of the wards only have, I think it's two people. So you've got five and so everyone's going to have to make their(...) stake, do their claim. That's right.

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You've been out door knocking somewhat? A little bit. Okay. Right now my position, my full-time job position has hindered that a little bit. Yeah. As of next Wednesday as of 4.30, I'm officially retired. Really? So I will be able to very actively be bothering the neighborhood, knocking on everyone's door. So right now it's been a lot of the people I've known throughout the years, throughout my community service, my volunteerism. Those are the people that I've been, where my signs are and that kind of stuff, the early ongoing. But yeah, the door knocking is going to start next week. So officially retired from your normal job as of next week? Yes. Well congrats to make it to the finish line and now you've got a brand new race to start. Exactly. Okay. So my mom made a joke about being retired and sent me a football player, me and him as though I'm retired and then went back to work again to...

(...)

Shortly. For the next season. Shortly thereafter. Yes, exactly. So, but that's the thing. We want to consider the Ward 2 Councilor job a full-time position. Okay. It's a large area. There's over 12,000 people that live in it. That's a big... So(...) I think the largest ward that I(...) know of so far is Ward 11 and they have about 14,000. So you've got two things. You've got 12,000 people in your area and it's one of the larger areas. Yes. It takes an hour just to drive from Copper Cliff out to past Worthington. Yeah. And that's the highway drive. That's not going into anybody's community or neighborhood and seeing things. So again, I believe it needs to be a full-time position because the people of the board deserve someone who's going to be there for them every time they call, every time that they have a problem. None of this, "Oh well, I work until five. I can't come out and see you or I'm not off until the weekend or anything like that." I want to be able to do for the ward like I've done for the apartment building I've worked in for the last 15 years. You call me with a problem. I'm there within minutes. We make a plan. We resolve the problem. And then we move on to the next one. Didn't the previous counselor get scrutinized on his expenses for fuel? Yes, he did. I remember something about that. Yes. I was just a little silly considering that it takes over an hour to drive from one side of the ward to the other. Yeah. And I would say at today's affordability awesomeness that it's going to even put on more miles and it's going to increase the(...) transportation expense. Absolutely. 100%.

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Okay. It's interesting.

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For the door knocking that you've done and talked to the residents over the last little while, what are the issues that's(...) on top of their minds? Most of the people in Ward 2 feel neglected. How? They feel that since amalgamation happened, that nothing has been done. When we were the town of Walden and we had Mayor Dick Johnson, if you had an issue and nobody had done something and plowed snow in front of your property or garbage had been left out or whatever, he personally would come out and take care of those things.(...) There were comments made last night at the meet the candidates for Ward 2 that we wouldn't be in the position we're in now with the aging infrastructure.(...) But if we would have an aging infrastructure if we had not amalgamized because each individual area would have up kept their infrastructure. So we wouldn't be looking at 25 year old pipes in the ground. The pipes would have been replaced along with it. Because the locals, the local. We would have taken care of those things.(...) Beaver Lake. They would to de-emalgamize like nobody's business. The best that I can offer them is a(...) disorganized township. Oh yeah, unorganized? Sorry, unorganized township. When I decided I was going to run for this position, I knew de-emalgamization was the biggest complaint for the outlying communities. I looked into what's involved.

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It technically can be done.(...) You're looking between 10 to 15 years. For the decoupling to happen? And it can't be done at the municipal level. You need partners at the provincial level and partners at the federal level and hundreds of them to be advocating for it. So unfortunately for us to go back to normal, it's not feasible at this stage of the game. It's just too much. So we need to figure out a way to work within the fact that we've been amalgamized. And to me, the easiest way to do that is keep the money from the people who pay their property taxes in their community. Instead of it all going to fund(...) legacy projects like the downtown center and other things, the people who live in the community should have access to the funds that they pay towards that community.

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Whether it be a certain percentage, because I understand that yes, we are a whole city and things have to be paid for for everybody, but 20, 30, 40% of any individual community's property taxes should be held within a coffer for that community. You shouldn't have to go to the city because you want new playground equipment. You shouldn't have to go to the city because there's a culvert that needs to be replaced on a little tiny culvert. Wasn't there a culvert somewhere where a car went in into it and then(...) they got severely hurt? Wasn't that out in Walden somewhere? That was a few years back now, but yes, I do believe it was out in the Ward 2 area.(...) Right now Beaver Lake spent five years getting a very small culvert replaced on a road because it keeps washing out. It took 10 years. That's it? And it replaced, yeah. And then when they put the new one in a month ago, six feet in the wrong spot.

(...)

If the people of Beaver Lake would have been given the money to go buy the culvert. And put it in themselves? Somebody owns a backhoe. Oh yeah. You know? I'm sure there's more than one out there. That's exactly. So these are the things that I realize we cannot de-amalgamate, but if we can get back to each community, having a community support system within the community, with this last snowstorm. If anybody, a personal person, you, me, Jack across the street, use their pickup truck and their plow to plow out city roads. And we're caught. Yeah. They were fined. Really? Yes. Why do we not have a community call out group? Okay, you got your truck. I got my truck. Okay, I'll meet you here. We'll split up from there. Yeah. Let's get people out. There were people out in Naughton and Whitefish using their snow machines to get the first responders out to the highway so that they could get into the hospital to do their jobs.

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But things like that are frowned upon by the city. So the city wants to retain control? Exactly. Which I don't think is working for us anymore too. We take very good care of ourselves. Just let us do it and compensate us for it. So if I've had to use my pickup truck and my plow to get my elderly neighbor out of his home because it was snowed in, I should be able to submit a bill to the city. X amount of hours, this much gas. And it shouldn't be a question because it's one less thing that the city had to do. It'd probably be more cost effective. Then the contractors that are coming from out of town and everything? Yes, I believe so. And I do believe the local neighbors are going to do a better job cleaning the mess up because they live there. Yeah, they know exactly what's needed. Again, you have boots on the ground in the local areas. That's right.

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So emergency preparedness from your ward and being an outlying area is up there. Like are there residents of Beaver Lake concerned? Oh, very much so. In Lively and in Copper Cliff,(...) you call an ambulance, you call the police. Well, the police is a little bit different. But you call it an ambulance and the ambulance is there within minutes. Okay. Which is great. If you live in Beaver Lake or out of the end of Panache Lake Road or anything and you call an ambulance,(...) I've been in situations where(...) someone was injured way at the end of Panache Lake Road and they actually drove the person up to the highway because for the amount of time it would have taken for the ambulance to get down and then go back. They caught up almost an hour worth of travel time.

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Yeah.(...) By driving them up to the highway. Right now, Beaver Lake response time, the city will tell you response time is 11 minutes. From where? From Whitefish. So that's station... Is that station manned all the time? Seven or eight.

(...)

Depends who you talk to.(...) Okay. So people will tell you, yes, it is manned all the time, but I have driven past there and there's not a soul there. That being said, someone could be on call. So is that station manned all the time?

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Okay. So it doesn't seem to(...) be manned all the time? No, but they're saying 11 minutes is the(...) response time. You can't drive from station seven to the Beaver Lake Community Club in 11 minutes without doing like 200 kilometers an hour. And then you've got traffic. Yes. And ambulances don't go that fast. That's right. Neither do fire trucks. Nope.

(...)

And then you're also dodging all the traffic from the quarry that's in behind... The quarry meaning... A gravel company in behind Beaver Lake that runs down all of the dirt roads that have no pavement, no proper plowing,(...) random stop signs and yield signs that

and no turning lanes out onto the highway. So now you have great big gravel trucks also holding up traffic when there's emergencies and stuff. Oh yeah.(...) It's become... and I realize a lot of the stuff on the major highway is not a municipality issue. That's an MTO issue. The road is owned by the province. That being said, all levels of government should be dealing with each other. So if we as a municipality are having an issue with a provincial road, then we should go to our provincial representatives and say, "Okay, we need to talk about this because this is a problem to my constituents. I can't fix it, but you can, so let's work together to fix it." So is that basically your approach on how to rectify? Well, with these problems, yes, because municipal government does have its hands tied. I understand that 100%.

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There is a scope of what we can do. This question was asked last night. I kind of giggled because that scope changes on a regular basis.

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Which scope? The scope of what the City Council can accomplish.

(...)

Oh. Because when... Wait, hang on. Isn't the scope already defined? Technically. But have you never noticed that when they want to do something and it doesn't fit into the defined scope, they just change the rules? Move it. We'll just make this bylaw this one. Listen, that's called moving the goalposts. Well, exactly. So, they do it all the time. So why can't we do it for our word? Why can't word two move the goalposts? There are people who have properties like hundreds of acres who, according to the bylaws, cannot homestead on their property. That's another issue altogether. So just quickly before we go down that rabbit hole, what is the definition of homestead the way you see it? So, building a second home on your property for your children and your grandchildren. Generational homes? Yes. Okay. Yes. And most of these homes do not have city of Sudbury sewer or water. They have a well. Field beds? And field beds. Old school. Yes. But the city tells them that the reason they cannot homestead on their property is because of infrastructure reasons. Yet the city infrastructure is nowhere on their property.(...) So, we talked about this housing crisis. Meanwhile, there's a bunch of people who would like to build a home for their children on their property, but they're not allowed to. They have all this space(...) because it's infrastructure. So it makes you question(...) a lot of things that are happening downtown. Yes, very much so. Because if you can shoehorn, anyways, that's just... It doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't. It doesn't make sense at all. I know that most of my ward is really not happy about the downtown center. When I went out to my very first month degree, again, which was in Beaver Lake. Beaver Lake happens to run during the summertime, so I got a lot of opportunity to get out there first between anywhere else because every place else just opened and started opening up in September. All the community groups get back together in September. So when I found out what some of these people pay for property taxes... Out in Beaver Lake area? Yeah,(...) so I know of some new home builds in your ward, and they're over 9 or 10, and they've got their own well.

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The only thing they get from the city is... And not the only thing, but they get garbage, I know, and they get plowing.

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Is there anything else that they would get? Not really, no. Because that's all that I can think of. Hopefully emergency services, hopefully the ambulance and the fire trucks show up. Because there are places in the ward that...

(...)

There are no emergency services either. But the way I see it, if you live in a rural area, you're pretty much self-sufficient. And most of the people are. That being said, if you want them to be self-sufficient, drop their property taxes. Because right now, Beaver Lake, what they pay in a year is basically what the interest is going to be on the loan for the downtown center. The interest? Yeah, for one year. And that's just one community paying the... When I did the math, because this is the other thing, it's very hard to find out what people pay for property taxes unless they're willing to tell you. Impact? Yeah.(...) Who assesses our property taxes. You can look up through them. One address at a time. Correct. It's not like you can see a map with the number on top of everything. No, you have no ability to do that. So until you go out and you talk to people, and I start talking to people and asking, if you don't mind telling me, what do you pay for property taxes? Pretty simple math, this many people times this much money equals... And yeah, basically Ward 2 is funding the downtown. So why do you think the(...) property taxes for the residents in Ward 2,(...) they're(...) very high? We pay one of the highest sets of property taxes in the whole city.(...) It's a lot of lakefront property.(...) If you break it down on why,(...) we have a lot of lakefront property and that costs you a small fortune in property taxes to have lakefront property. Now when you look at a place like Panache, well, a lot of that lakefront property are non-permanent residents. Correct. So they don't even have the right to vote. They don't have the right to say anything, yet they're still contributing to the fact that the road hasn't been piled. The road hasn't been repaid.(...) A(...) lot of the people too in Panache too do live somewhere else in Ward 2, so they are still going to be voting in Ward 2. But there are a lot of people who live in other places, other complete cities, other complete municipalities. Even there's Americans there too. That's exactly. So we are collecting all of those taxes from all of those people and still can't get a road plot. Sounds like(...) Washington representation. No, taxation without representation. That's exactly.

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Doesn't seem right to me.

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Okay.

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So,(...) the affordability thing.

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Everything's going up. The return on the ROI on our dollar. Stretching our dollar to go farther is tough.

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Are there any homeless out in Ward 2? Like homeless, we've been talking about it quite a bit in the sense that(...) if you're in town you see it.

(...)

What's happening out in your area? Well, the city decided about two and a half years ago to start housing some of the homeless population from downtown in one of the hotels in Lively. ROI really? Yes. That didn't work out so great. There were several overdoses, a bunch of fights, a stabbing. Things didn't work so great. There's two hotels, motel hotels that I know of in Lively.(...) So one of them? The

Now I've got to beep that out.

(...)

I know who they are.

Yeah. So, it's one of the hotels in Sudbury. It did not(...) go well. So a lot of those people chose to leave the hotel that the city was paying for and they have migrated to behind the grocery store and have started an encampment. In Lively? In Lively, yes. Okay. Last count I do believe there's 25 people in this encampment. We do see them walking up and down the street.

(...)

So far, the majority of them seem to actually be homeless people because they do believe homeless is a word that we use as an umbrella which actually does not describe the problem. There are people who are actually homeless, people who were one paycheck away from losing everything, who work hard, who do everything they possibly can, but because of the cost of living, the cost of inflation and everything, they're just not able to make ends meet. And then we have our people who have drug addiction issues and people with mental problems and then we have that small piece of the pie that go with mental and drug addiction problems. From what I see in Lively, most of the people who have made it out to Lively are more on the homeless side.(...) Unfortunately lately we have seen several drug addiction issues.

(...)

People just sleeping in the vestibule of the bank,(...) people sleeping in the parking lot of the grocery store, people sleeping on the grass behind the gas station, and you can tell that they are unebriated. They're not just a person looking for a place to hang out. They are actively using illicit drugs. And it's difficult in Lively because we are not used to that. No, it's a small community.(...) And Copper Cliff is a small community as well. Is there any homeless encampments in Copper Cliff that is known? In Copper Cliff, as an actual encampment, I have not heard anything, but I've heard lots of constituents in Copper Cliff saying that(...) since Energy Court became a homeless encampment, that they are wandering further into Copper Cliff. They(...) are seeing them there. They are not necessarily staying there, but they are seeing them go through the garbage on garbage day and stuff like that and then make their way back down the highway, back down to Energy Court. What does that do for community safety? Not very much.

(...)

To the residents(...) in the non-really rural areas,(...) are they getting a cent? So a resident down Panage Road,(...) and I can't do names, but there was someone walking down there and a resident knew that the person wasn't from there. And he basically asked, "Can I help you with anything? Do you need a ride?" And anyways, so the resident of Panage Road took this guy and brought him out of the community because he knew he didn't belong there.

(...)

Should he have done that? Well, that's up to himself, but he basically wanted to make sure that their own(...) community was safe. Exactly. So, and you go down Panage Road, that's rural.(...) Everyone's relatively independent. Everybody knows everybody.(...) But when you get into the urban setting, subdivisions, Lively Coppercliff, Naughton even,(...) the community safety and the mind, especially if you have kids out there, like how's that going over? Well, that's the thing. People are afraid. And again, we're not used to it out in the rural communities.

(...)

My son was 13 before he saw a homeless person. That's because I had taken him to Toronto to see Rock of Ages. And there was a homeless dude out in front of the Royal Alex when we left at the end. And my son looked at me and he says, "Does that man sleep on the street?" And I said, "Yes, he does, sweetie." But because he had grown up in Lively... He'd never seen it. Never had seen it up close and personal. Now my son's 29 years old and he'll walk over to the quick way and come back and say, "Mom, you know that guy? Was that in front of the bank again?" And I'm like, "Oh God, here we go."

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And when you call the police, that is one issue in our outskirts community too. We do need to look at how the police force is allotted because short of calling the police and telling them that your husband's about to shoot you,(...) they show up the next day.

(...)

They're not present for when things are actually going down. So when you have the homeless, drug addicted, mentally ill person who's in the front of the bank, begging people for money as they come out from the bank machine and causing a kerfuffle,(...) you call the police, they're not going to come. So I can understand why the man in Pnage said, "Come on, let's go." Because if you don't take care of yourself,(...) that being said, I think I'd be a little afraid to get a loan into a car with(...) somebody like that. Yeah. So basically,(...) you're going for ward two, counselor. What are you going to do about it?

(...)

Basically, everything I possibly can. I figured the biggest reason, one of the things that,(...) why Michael got as much done as he did and also why Michael got in as much trouble as he did is because he didn't shut up. Okay. He was a mouthpiece. When I told his daughter that I was considering doing this, she laughed hysterically and she said, "You're a bigger mouthpiece than my dad."

(...)

If there's a problem, if my constituents come to me and say, "Okay, this is a problem," I'm not going to stop until we find a resolution. It may not be exactly the resolution the residents wanted and it may not be exactly the resolution that the council wanted, but we're going to find some sort of compromise to make sure everybody's got something because we cannot go on like this any longer just thinking that, "Oh, well, the status quo is okay. The status quo is okay." It's not. Won't the books just balance themselves? They technically should. How? Well, because there's enough money coming in to support all the projects we want to do.

(...)

The city of Sudbury should not be in the business of(...) the Downtown Events Center. Do you know that the city of Sudbury owns 600 properties that are vacant right now? Are you sure they're vacant? Well, they keep the lights on and stuff, but there's no activities going on in them. Do you have an example of a single one? Offhand, no. Offhand, I don't. I have the list at home because I've looked it up with another candidate.

(...)

In a different area because both of us feel a concern about this because when there's the discussion about what we're going to do for affordable housing and for homeless people and stuff like that, there's places to put these people already that the city owns. So the city owns... But they should be in the business of owning property. And vacant property?

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There's schools. There's office things.

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You, as a Ward 2 candidate, how are you going to get to the bottom of this? Well, first of all, let's find... get a list out to everybody in the city. What these properties are. Let's look at what we can redevelop them for. And we shouldn't be in the business of owning them. They should be being sold to developers for them to do something with them. The city owning property... Is a tax burden on us? Very, very, very much so because we're paying to keep that property. We're paying to keep the lights on, keep the water running and all the rest of it. So(...) the money that comes into the city should be going back out for sewers, water, roads, sidewalks, that kind of stuff. Basic infrastructure? Basic infrastructure. Not to be building anything. That's not our job. You have people whose job it is to come in and build something. So(...) if the(...) city's job is for basic infrastructure, what would that do for attracting new investments

(...)

for small business and soil? To build up the infrastructure and allow people to come in and buy some of these properties then you're going to do great for business because now you've got a developer coming in. The infrastructure is already laid. They don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. And they can come in and... Get down to business. And do what they want to need to do. Which... We had a discussion about affordable housing last night. The problem with affordable housing is who's footing the bill? Yeah. Because landlords go into that job as a business, not as a charity. So we have(...) to start looking at(...) a different set of(...) fundamentals. So affordable housing. Tiny homes. Um...(...) What...

(...)

This is going to be a dumb question. But would a tiny home fit on a family property where they have more than 20 acres? Absolutely. 100%. Are you sure? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. How are they going to do their own water and sewer? That's where you... That's when the city bylaws kick in about the infrastructure. But if you're looking at a place that doesn't have city water and city sewer, and you're already running off a subject tank and a well, adding a tiny home isn't going to increase. That's like adding one more person into your home. It's not going to increase your water usage or your sewer usage very, very much. The city, from what I understand, classifies mobile homes as a tiny home. Okay. Okay. But there's a rule that it can only be on the property for two years before you permanently build. A(...) mobile home?(...) Yes. Really? Yes. Bylaw states that if you've bought a plot of land, you have two years to keep the mobile home on it while you build the permanent property, and then the mobile home has to go. So what's the definition of a mobile home? Is there something you can tell behind your vehicle, like a trailer? Yeah. What about those long trailers? Like in a trailer park?

(...)

The trailer park has different rules. Oh, yeah? Yeah. We're putting it on your property. The trailer park... No. The campground trailer park style, that's on Skill Lake.

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So out on Skill Lake, which is out by Fairbanks. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Now I see it on the map. Yeah. There is a campground there. It's like the wild... Apparently it's like the wild, wild west. Don't bother. Yeah. And anyways, that'd be something to... I will have to go take a drive out there. To check out. It's just... We'll leave it at that. It's like the wild, wild west out there. Yeah.

(...)

And then there's(...) a lot going on. Okay. I will definitely have to take a ride out there.(...) I'd love suggestions to go and take a ride out there. I'm not suggesting. I'm asking a question. Bill, I never... Honestly, the last time I was down at Fairbanks was a couple years ago. Okay. I visited my brother-in-law while he was camping at the provincial park. Yeah. And I just went straight to the provincial park and didn't deviate. So I love the... It is a big ward. Yes. It is. It's a huge, huge ward. That's why I say you need to be there. There's a lot of miles. Yes. So again, full-time, you're officially retired from your job. Yep. Starting next Wednesday. Okay. So a week away. So by the time the election rolls around. I will have had a month to knock on everybody's door and make sure that I've made it through the entire ward. And I think in a month I should be able to hit pretty much everybody's door. When it comes to the taxes over it's at the... for a full time, I think it's a big deal. So I'm going to have to go through the entire ward. Okay. And I think in a month I should be able to hit pretty much everybody's door.(...) When it comes to the taxes over it's at the... for us as Sudbury residents.

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What's your stance on the taxes? I don't think taxes should be going up.(...) Again, we're all paying enough money right now. Yeah. Let's find out where the leakage is. Because there's obviously money being spent inappropriately.

(...)

Being spent twice, like redundant money because they didn't do it right the first time. Okay. I think that if... Have you got an example of that? Where they haven't done something right? Anderson Drive.

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Anderson Drive. What happened there? There was supposed to be a two year project. They're on year four of the two year project.

(...)

Every time they try to do something there is some sort of stoppage of work. What do you mean a stoppage of work? It's been(...) city issues that have stopped the work. So sewer lines work. Isn't it a city project? It is a city project. And the city's stopping the work? Sometimes because the city has not properly marked the sewer and water lines. Isn't that the company that takes care of that? Isn't it their responsibility? You would have think so. I saw one out today by Walmart in the south end as I was driving here. And she was out there with whatever and the company name was there. Yeah. Hydro One has marked the hydro lines.

(...)

I think ten times now the tenant, the resident that I spoke to the other day in four years they've been out. And the reason, most recent stoppage is because one of the lines that was marked as a defunct line(...) turned up had power still going to it. So does the hydro worker need retraining? Well, Enbridge. Enbridge has been out a thousand times to mark the lines and the lines are not marked right now if you go down Anderson Drive(...) they have pilot holes drilled down the middle of the road so they can put an inspection camera because they have no clue where any line is. Is this true? Is this true or are you full of it? No, I've checked my Facebook. I did a walk down there and took a video. Fell in one of the pilot holes. Can you imagine a carpenter building a house? You know, they say measure twice and cut once. But they don't check the lines so much.

(...)

This seems out. But the city employee or a Belanger employee almost got electrocuted the other day. That was for the last reason for the stoppage of work is because there was a line that was marked as a defunct power line and no longer had power to it and he put his back hole into the ground and there was still power there. Really? So everything got shut down for about two weeks. They just started back up again. So whose(...) watch is this happening on?(...) We're not allowed to say. No, is it the city watch? Is it a contractor watch? Is it?

(...)

The city has a project manager who is watching over this. Okay, so it's happening on the city's watch? Yes. And then we're getting overrun? Yes. And that tax money is going into this two year project for four years? Four years in.

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Do they? They have no snow removal. They have no garbage pickup because a vehicle can't get down the road. Residents on a certain street? Yeah, Anderson Drive, and likely they cannot get down the road.

(...)

People have their houses up for sale because they're so sick and tired of it and they can't sell their houses. This seems like a circus. It does, doesn't it?

(...)

It's very frustrating. And when you try, because again, I have not been elected yet. So when I go to the media consultants for Hydro One and Enbridge and Belanger. Who's the media consultant? The person that's supposed to be the mouthpiece for their company? Oh yeah. I get no response. What do you get? Crickets? They won't even respond. They won't return my emails.

(...)

Isn't it their job? Well, that's why I went to them as opposed to just calling like the 1-800 number for Hydro One. I did the deep dive and I'm like, okay, who's responsible for media(...) statements and stuff? Let's go directly to those people. And because even if you give me a generic, you know, we're working on it, we're trying our best, something, zero response. Not even a thanks for emailing. We got your email. We'll get back to you. So is it safe to say there's a few gaps here? There's lots of gaps. And this is why I say you need a mouthpiece. You need someone who's going to be there every day. Okay. What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? Well, you haven't been lost for words this morning. I never am. Okay.

(...)

That brings us to,(...) what's next here? Oh,(...) so(...) that brings us to the Anderson project. There's a splash pad and a public sauna. Yep. What's,(...) so what's the deal with, so what's actually happening there? Because right now, nothing. There's no shovels in the ground. There's no nothing. Nothing is actually physically happening on the property. Has it been budgeted for? It's supposed to be the $4 million that we got from(...) the sale of Meatbird.(...) My biggest argument to that is, okay, we spent $4 million,(...) whether anybody agrees with that project or not.(...) You're talking about something that's going to require water for the next 40 years. As long as the facility is open, it's going to need water. So has anybody budgeted in the water? Is there water, is there enough water supply? That's the other thing. What's the infrastructure there to hold it up? Now they have just recently redid, well recently it's been 15 years or 20 years now since they reran the main water main down Main Street and took it out of the back. So the infrastructure to supply the water to the splash pad may be in place. That being said, who's paying for the water?(...) Isn't the city that pays for the water? Well, did they allot that out of the $4 million from Meatbird or we're just going to be on the hook for it? Be on the hook for the water. And I don't think it's going to technically be the city. It's going to be the people of 4-2 is going to get a tax increase to pay for the water(...) to run the splash pad. So is this splash pad needed? Is it wanted?

(...)

The people who ran the committee to have the town hall meetings and all of that stuff about the splash pad will tell you that not enough people showed up. They were given all kinds of opportunity to make their statements and nobody made statements and they moved forward with this with this splash pad because the people who were available to vote voted yes.(...) When you talk to any resident of Lively about the splash pad, the first comment is roll of eyes, shake of head, what do we need a damn splash pad for?(...) And the communal sauna is considering we now have an encampment behind(...) the grocery store. The communal sauna is starting to frighten people(...) because what are we going to find in said communal sauna? Who's monitoring this? Are you hiring a full-time person to watch over this stuff?

(...)

I don't think anybody has looked at the whole big picture. Yes, the $4 million that we got from Meatbird needs to be spent for something for the kids to do because the kids are ticked that they lost their swimming pool.

(...)

Especially if... You could walk to it. Kids as young as 10, 11 years old were allowed to walk to Meatbird. There was a lifeguard there. There was a path there. There was a path, exactly. So kids had freedom, they had autonomy to go and go swimming. Meatbird was great because I remember I used to go there and it was awesome.(...) It was awesome. Kids loved it.(...) The amount of school trips and all the rest of the stuff like that. I don't think anybody has really realized.

(...)

Liability insurance. What happens when someone slips and falls in the splash pad or in the sauna? There's a splash pad down at Hillcrest.

(...)

There's a monitor there as far as I know. It's a very busy splash pad.

(...)

To put one up at the Anderson farm? It seems a little redundant.

(...)

It's not that far away.

(...)

I realized the kids from Lively can't walk. They have to cross the highway to get there. It was part of the argument. I think I really believe that there could be something better(...) done for the youth in... On the other side of the highway. By the Anderson area. Streets 1 through 12. Exactly. You run on the ski hill property and stuff like that. The ski hill only runs when there's snow. There's huge other property there. What if some of the facility was moved over to the ski hill so it could be used more than just in the winter time? That would be wonderful.

(...)

That would be a great thing to look at. Has anyone(...) even considered it? Someone got it in their mind, and I don't know who,(...) about this splash pad. All of a sudden that's all we heard. Splash pad, splash pad, splash pad. I'm like, "Okay, well, it's not too bad, but then they're going to put it in the middle of Anderson Farm."

(...)

Isn't that going to break up the farm and mess it up? Well, it's not just that. I was on the Anderson Farm Committee for almost 10 years. We wanted to put a sea can on the property so that we could store chairs and tables and stuff for when we have the tents in the barn. Is there a sea can there now? It is. It took three years to fight with the city because it didn't fit into the heritage part of the farm. It is an eyesore. The splash pad is different. Well, it's not a heritage. It's like, "Come on."

(...)

Is it somebody's legacy project? That's what it's starting to look like to me. And again, until I'm elected, a lot of this stuff I'm not going to be able to find out for sure. All I can do is listen to the constituents right now, tell me what they're upset about and what they're seeing and what they're feeling. And mostly I agree with them because I'm seeing and feeling the exact same thing. Things are not progressing in a manner that(...) is bringing...

(...)

When you look at our little community too compared to other ones, within Copper Cliff Lively, PENAG, the amount of(...) non-industrial business, so restaurants, fast food joints,(...) ice cream stores, things like that. They're all small shops relatively. We don't have any of them. Oh, no? No. Okay. They're all fast food restaurants(...) except for pizza places. Yeah. And then you start getting further down 17. There's nothing. So then you take the bypass into Chelmsford and they have everything. In Chelmsford? In Chelmsford. Well, if you have Canadian Tire, you have everything. Well, I posted that the other day. They asked if you could only shop in one store for the rest of your life, what store would it be? It was an American asking it, so I had to explain what Canadian Tire was to him. Okay. He got himself an edumacation on Canadian Tire. But yeah, they have everything and we have nothing. And I know in past years, there's been actual roadblocks put up to stop a McDonald's or an A&W or something coming into Lively. Well,(...) fast food isn't good for anybody. No, it's not. But that's when people are driving down the highway and they're tourists and they're, "Oh, we need to stop someplace." That's what gets tourists in. Well, if you have other things going on in your community, you get them in because they're trying to pick up a quick burger or something like that and they're like, "Oh, look at this and look at this beautiful parking. We can go and do this and we can..." And then the next time they come through, then they make a plan to stop in our community. If we don't have anything for anybody besides the people that live in the community, we're never going to build up a community. And I'm not just saying tourism. I'm just... In general, we need more things in our community to bring a bigger tax revenue, a bigger tax base. And we can get more stuff done, but we can't put that on the residents and raise their taxes to increase our tax base. Let's bring some businesses in.(...) Let's modernize our ward. Where would you see a good place to bring business and put them? Until they actually fixed up the(...) tennis courts between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, there was a section there where the tennis courts were dilapidated. They recently have turned them into pickle courts, pickle ball courts, and put a skate park up. That section there would have made an excellent place for a fast food restaurant. You could have had a drive-through because of the way it is between Fifth and Sixth Avenue.(...) Lots of space for parking.(...) Something could go there, no problem. You start driving around lively. There's all kinds of property between Copper Cliff and just even Naughton where something could be put up.

(...)

But again, you need developers to come in and do that. It's not the city's job to be in the business of doing this. If the city owns the land, sell the land off to a developer, cut some red tape so that they can get their building put up.

(...)

Make sure infrastructure's in place for them, and then let's grow our economy. Let the businesses do their thing? That's right. So when it comes down to(...) building,(...) what's(...) the arena? What's your take on what's going on over there?

(...)

It's very sad that,(...) again, we had a developer who came to our city and said, "I want to do this.(...) I'd like a little bit of help with some discount on some property taxes, but I want to build this." And then all of a sudden the city's like, "No, we're going to build it."

(...)

That doesn't make any sense to me. Again, everything was there.

(...)

And I had no problem with giving new builds a property tax cut for the first few years to encourage the new build. I have no issue with that whatsoever. In the(...) downtown situation, the one on the King's Way, apparently, from what I've heard from people, was supposed to be given to us 30 years afterwards. So we would have owned it in the end anyways. But now we're spending $500 million, and I know they keep saying, "No, we're at $200. We're at $200." Project's not even close to done. Palants are in the ground. You haven't put a piece of electrical wire or two by four or anything up yet.(...) If you really think it's staying at $200 million,(...) and then we find out the other day that they cut a bunch of funding to projects that they already had green-lighted... Really? ... to put into the downtown fund so that if it does run over budget, it's not so hard on us. So meanwhile, those other projects aren't being done. But if they're taking money from other said pots and bring them to the downtown, doesn't that take away from the residents in their communities? Absolutely, 100%.

(...)

I was quite appalled on Tuesday(...) I heard that. And they did what? There's seven or eight different projects that have already been approved. Money has been set aside. They're like, "Eh, we'll wait to do those. We're going to take the money and put it towards the downtown fund." So how much is this thing that actually cost us in the end? I don't think anyone has a real number because(...) some of the other candidates haven't even seen the final plans for the arena, downtown, whatever you want to call it, itself. And(...) you know, I don't... In the real world, if you're building a house, you have a contractor, come in, build your house. Everything is laid out. And even the city... I'm going out on a limb here. Even the city wants to see your plans. You have to bring them plans to the planning committee to make sure that all the permits are in place and that you are so many feet away from this and they all absolutely 100%. So that's kind of like... Is that a double standard? Yes, 100%.

(...)

I think our whole city runs on a double standard right now. And I think that's part of the problem. I think the reason we have so many people running in so many wards, like there's a couple of wards, there's seven, eight people running in the ward, is because people are fed up.(...) This All Boys Club that has been going on for the last 20 years, it's not working for us anymore. This is... Well, it's working for some... Well, yeah, it's working for the certain people that are getting all(...) of the tenders and all of the(...) benefits from what's going on. But for the majority of us, people aren't happy. So what(...) should people do? Come election day. Vote for change. Vote for democracy. True democracy happens when the people(...) speak(...) and your elected representative uses their mouth to reflect your words.

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