Sudbury Ward 8 Candidate George Lalonde: Public Safety, Housing, Taxes & City Accountability

municipal election is coming up on monday october the twenty six just less than two weeks away george alone war date is in the studio good to see a d_c_ thanks for having me so after your career is uh... by right now for a fact that profession and readers and why you throw your hat in the ring for uh... counselor well uh... you know it's uh... some stuff we uh... we were you know the snowbirds that were going away and we're not snowbirds anymore and uh... instead of sitting at uh... home and doing not much uh... my decide the you know what i'm gonna run in uh... municipal politics uh...(...) you know i love this community is uh... my lifelong resident of this community lived in different areas of this community paid taxes for forty years in this community and uh... i think they can uh... help uh... make a few changes down there so you're saying you're forty years old no actually i didn't start paying taxes till it was in my early twenty but forty plus tax

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okay right on(...) when it comes to uh... affordability in the city

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how can this uh... how can the municipality(...) do things to make things a little more affordable for the residents especially your residence in the heart of new set brie(...) well i mean that you know it's it's supply demand right i mean uh... housing prices are through the roof not only in set brie all over uh... as far as affordability uh... you know i don't envy uh...(...) young uh... professionals coming through uh... you know three bedroom houses you're not gonna get it for under three fifty four hundred thousand uh... and all that kind of stuff but and then we have uh... people that don't they can't afford rent rent is through yeah it's up there it's reaches up there is probably one of the higher rental prices in the province right now and uh... and uh... people are having a tough time for the rent and uh... now we get into people that do not have become homeless some seniors some young people uh... some have uh... substance abuse problems and mental health problems it's a complicated uh...(...) things so uh...(...) you know that cities uh... you know we're getting money from the feds in the province you know we have the uh... uh... the uh... big manitude project going on we have uh... lorraine street project that is now complete uh... the peace tower uh... uh... mister zulich is involved with uh... and uh... we have we just got another uh... some more money for two hundred and forty some units in the valley and that but i mean but that's uh... that's the few years or a year or so away yet right

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uh... so what's uh... we have uh... i was reading the other day they figured we have close to a thousand maybe people that are need places? i mean talking about everybody but so are these places going to be afford geared to income or are they under the city wing or are they private enterprise? yeah apparently some of them are going to be uh... percentage of them

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i remember back in the day where sebri housing had you know geared to income rentals and then they only had places for seniors and then that all changed and they just went to the market because it was just getting there's too many people on a waiting list for too many things right right okay and i'm sure that list is still pretty long

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so when it comes down to the homeless and the open drug use and the zombies that are touching their toes as they walk across across rocks? crosswalks? yeah well people are people are afraid right

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i mean i've worked in the community safety my whole life(...) i know what it uh... i haven't had a pretty good idea what it takes to keep the community safe uh... you gotta start with response uh... and you gotta do uh... you know your inspections and you look at it and stuff and of course at the end of the day you gotta do enforcement uh...(...) you know we can't direct police to tell them what to do uh... but uh... you know uh... those people uh... need help and uh... that's is that the solution i mean i know that in toronto they're opening what is called these uh... stabilization uh... community centers where uh... uh... ambulances bring people that have addiction and what have you to these places instead of bring them to the emerge so they're on these these guys are unloading these patients at these at this in seven minutes where they're where they're averaging thirty four to forty minutes out of the state of the hospital so it frees up paramedics

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and please see also police that have to stay with these people in hospital until they get to see a doctor and so on and so forth they're some of them are violent uh... they have all kinds of issues so you're with fire services for uh... part of your career thirty five years what kind of uh... uh... how does the fire department respond to a call when it comes to someone in need uh... for uh... an o_d_ or is that the email uh... ambulance that goes and yes so that's what it is yes it's really nine one one system uh... people call the ask for an ambulance fire uh... please and if it's an incident and once it gets dense gets pushed out to the in what they call the cap the communication uh... the central ambulance communication center and if they believe that they think that the that fire should be dispatched they send it back to the nine one one station and at a police station police station then dispatches fire and uh... they have what they call that they have a blanket call out for fire and uh... e-mails so is that after the ambulance goes to the on scene and if they determine you need a fire yeah it's a matter of uh... it's a matter of uh... the the the call is made by the dispatcher uh... they say uh... you know my friend's o-dean is he breathing no as soon as that they hit that they have questions as soon as you hit a certain question then they hit the button that's gotta go get called back to fire is that service running as efficient as possible right now as far as you know uh... i'm not sure if it is or not uh...(...) i know that when i was working sometimes uh... ems would get the call first which is what happens and fire would get the call later sometimes much later depends on the situation so it depends on the dispatch depends on the whole sometimes the fire would get there first sometimes the ambulance would get there first did they ever get the call at the same time and see who got there first? yeah sure and when we first started out with the defibrillators uh... we were we were the fire was getting there first a lot of times so we seen a lot of uh... nasty stuff uh... unfortunately but uh... i mean that's the world that we live in and uh... a lot of people say that's not what we signed up for but you know what that's what(...) we're living with yeah riding the fire truck you're not just putting out fires you gotta deal with a whole bunch of other issues absolutely yeah and it gets more complicated as we go on okay um... since we're uh... on the homeless what would be your your approach you know a year late a year into the job uh... what would the where do you hope the ship would be steered towards and what would you push for

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you know at that time let's assume you have you let's assume you're in the chair yeah

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a year a year into the race or a year into the term where would you want the things to be(...) well to tell you the truth i mean if i happen to get to be the uh... the one that's in the chair

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i think one of the first things we have to do in the first meeting in november after everybody gets sworn in is well you gotta deal with the people over at energy court we gotta go they're in the mud there

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you know they they've got their clothes get wet or it gets full of snow cold uh... they(...) they have there's places where they can wash their things but and some of these people are barely uh... able to get through the day uh... so they throw the clothes away and we you know we got the people over at s_o_s_ there that are that there are sundays and you know they give them clean clothes that the community has dropped off over there to them and that and that's great but uh... uh... you know i'd like to see them uh... they gotta move we're gonna have to house as we can of course if we could that would be great and uh... and eventually either set up an advisory committee of some kind or what have you uh... to deal with uh... exactly what what what we're gonna do with with energy court period

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we need to build the many homes do we need to do you know have come up with do some brainstorming come up some ideas and then at some point the council is going to have to decide what exactly we're going to do

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looks like council is responsible for for pretty well uh... having them go to energy court uh... you know when they cleared out memorial uh... memorial park yeah uh... on the topic of the tiny homes tiny homes have already been defined as mobile homes(...) would you uh... reclassify that and categorize it as a real tiny home and not something on wheels like a trailer park or something like that? something a little bit more permanent uh... yeah because uh... it's it's it's kinda hard to uh... off the top of my head right now to say okay what do we want to do uh... if(...) you go down to energy court you can see what happened to the mobile washrooms there the doors are torn off the place is did they use them for firewood? I have no idea but it's tore up it's bad it went to the barrel and they burned it? well i think most of the most of the building is plastic so i mean but(...) the go get project is down there they have people down there trying to help them and that they're trying to do the best they can with what they got before we leave the uh... downtown area and get back to your ward what's your thoughts on the uh... event center? well the event center is uh... you know we're in for a penny you're in for a pound uh... apparently from what i've heard and the writings of people and what have you talk is uh... you know we're in for a hundred million dollars it's bought and paid for concrete is paid for the steel is paid for um... it seems to be moving uh... moving along uh... you know as far as i'm concerned it's the water's you know it's under the bridge it's gone and let's build it and and see what exactly happens we'll find out at some point exactly what the cost is going to be i have no idea what that's what that's going to be but uh... um... it should be uh... it should be interesting so a few other things too that's going to be interesting of course people talk about wacky wings and what that's going to cost but i mean there's a uh... they decided to expropriate the property and there's a process to that and uh... and they're gonna have to follow the rules and go about it that way and the cost is going to be the cost that uh... you said a hundred i think it's really two hundred that's been budgeted correct yes that two hundred's been budgeted but apparently a hundred's already been spent so the concrete's been paid for and the steel's been paid for so okay okay um... have how much door knocking have you been out door knocking what are they saying yeah i've been door knocking and as much as we can we're going to do we're going to be doing the blitz and in the last three weeks here and a lot of people have been in different communities and different sections of war date right and uh...(...) everything the thing that comes up is these pop-up

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rentals rooming houses type things or you want to call them uh...(...) lodge hones lodging homes or you want to call them uh... you know rentals what have you rrls uh you know uh registered rental uh licenses uh they do that in brampton um everybody's uh got a different version of it but at the end of the day uh some people uh it affects some people more than others i talked to i spoke to one guy on og street and he spent fifty thousand dollars trying to fix his driveway and fence because he had fifteen or twenty people living in a house next door they're coming onto his driveway so he put a fence up then they were hitting his fence so he put piping on the inside of the fence so they would hit the pipe instead of damaging his fence he said he said i don't know if i could sell my house this is with all of this they're driving they parked on the lawn they parked on the street they you know(...) and he comes out he said they call bylaw the bylaw comes doesn't hear anything back and that's another thing that's got to be looked at and that's another thing that comes up that bylaw doesn't show up or they do show up and they come back and they don't answer but it's much later they didn't really haven't done anything and then sometimes they do do something and uh and it's just not consistent uh like i said before i mean in the fire as far as accountability goes you know you have a response and then you have to inspect and then after you have to enforce and uh you know we have bylaws in place for long grass parking on the streets all that stuff we need to enforce them when it comes to the accountability of the city itself and(...) keeping things transparent and let the taxpayers know what's actually going on uh is there anything that you would want to(...) you know help direct the ship yeah i think communication's got to be better uh through like me probably through the councilor to the community whether it be a(...) facebook page or a city page or award page you know we all know that the community action networks are are going to be going away and they're going to bring back you're going to bring into this this(...) healthy initiative fund which is supposed to be easier for people to get money to do stuff in their in their award(...) but we'll have to wait and see how that comes out is that going to replace the can yeah apparently that's going to be the thing that replaces the can does every ward have a can right now or it's only some uh only some i believe i know like a lot of them do uh if all of them do i'm not sure about that but okay but i know the ward board eight has a great can uh they've done a lot of work uh i was out this summer when they had their new separate days very well attended very well organized uh you know it was great to see the community go property taxes they're necessary evil the coffers are uh property property taxes uh you know we're at uh we're at about 800 million plus dollar budget yeah almost a b almost a b word getting to the b uh you know to 248 million i believe we have in reserves and you know we have the 1.5 uh special levy tax um and you know council's got whoever's going to have to understand the budget process 58 lines of service uh it's complicated it's a the documents about 300 and whatever page is wrong do you think it's over complicated uh you know uh you got to tap into the resources that you have whether it be the cfo the chief financial officer or people that work in the office i'm sure you could ask them questions i'm sure they could clarify stuff it's a complicated document type but if the foy request is kind of um uh(...) set aside set aside and and the time just expands yeah well the freedom(...) of information has to take its course right uh and uh what would be inappropriate

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you know you put you go on yeah oh gosh i mean that's uh that's another you worked you worked at the city i worked at the city i did uh but we we don't work on timelines you know what do you work on we were gone you know the alarm goes off yeah we get the call you got within a minute and a half we're out the door so is it is it unreasonable for the foy to be served up in a minute and a half maybe the fire guys can give the guys at city hall some training you know what uh i think it could probably teach them stuff some stuff and some somebody could probably teach them stuff respond okay it's two-way street absolutely response time response time imagine very important

george on another note how can we attract new businesses here in the north you know the north we're mineral we're mineral rich we have a lot of resort natural resources uh whether you directly service that sector or our supporting business how can we get more and younger entrepreneurs(...) yeah so first of all uh you know we you know we have we have the big uh building that over a milli drive that uh they're building there was it 40 million dollar um sandvik for sandvik correct yeah so obviously sandvik must know something that is going on whether the reopening of the levac mine that kind of stuff uh attracting other businesses i mean we have to we have to help them out we have to eliminate the red tape we've got to make it feasible easier for them to to operate and separate uh you know we hear stories about people are just uh making it easy for uh for entrepreneurs to get started they give them a break they delay maybe delay their their their tax or reduce their their taxes a bit and and bump it up down the road just to help them along a little bit uh there's probably a lot of ways that we'd probably use that um you know on an 800 800 million dollar budget i'm sure we can reallocate funds here or there uh or get the greater setbury uh uh business uh sector to to uh come up with some ideas i'm sure they have some uh economic growth(...) and um maybe also work on trying to keep uh businesses that are here you know we we lost mcclain engineering a few years ago gone wsib gone you know uh stuff like that those are we're great paying jobs uh so we've got to take care of the people that are here too already uh so uh we we do have to uh i mean we're trying to build a community we're trying to build right uh we gotta have an event center is going to attract people from the north hopefully um we're gonna have we have to build our uh a commercial uh base we gotta build our industrial base we got a new industrial site going up in the south end which is obviously good news right right by the highway but yeah something out there yeah and then uh we gotta that'll build our private tax base right more people working more people buying homes good paying jobs um you know so they all go kind but uh yeah the elimination of red tape i'm sure we could still eliminate some stuff to make it easier for folks to(...) come on winter's coming snow removal yeah yeah(...) there's uh some efficiencies that others have mentioned uh are there any issues from the residents that when you after you've talked to them that they bring up with regards to the snow plowing in the sidewalk situation yeah they uh you know some of them have said yeah yeah we need to our sidewalks aren't cleaned uh fast enough for you know we've got i think somebody's read somewhere we got 375 miles of sidewalks that's like right in the Toronto just in ward eight no not in ward eight but in this city in the city okay yeah so uh do we have to do something do we have to change our call out do we have to call them out earlier once we have less snow coming out you know that a lot of people say you want to plow the driveways then they go by and they sand them well even of course we have we have equipment that have plows on them and sander behind it so they do both at the same time um and that being said uh it's uh we're we live in we live in the north so well if we we know that they could uh weather can change in a in a in a hurry and we experience that the last march right oh yeah with that like storm in a hundred years that we got hammer on and we can't expect our i mean our city uh folks people that work with the city are plow guys i mean they're trying their best uh and uh you know he's got to give them the proper tools right a proper guidance and uh give them okay this is what we're going to do and eventually if that's what we got to change our is our policies well then that's what we have to do is there a fire hall in ward eight(...) there is a fire one a fire hall in ward eight no there's not there's not okay it would be ward 11 on leon street okay(...) okay uh any last remarks you want to make before uh before approaching wrap-up yeah no just uh you know

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i'm a lifelong um resident of greater separate lived in a lot of different communities everything all this a lot of people saying well you don't live in the ward well we're only phone call away an email away text away and uh you know if you're close enough you can yell at me in the grocery store i don't know yeah i know of other candidates that didn't live in their ward meanwhile they were uh they were there and yeah did a lot of driving yeah i'm gonna be i'm gonna be accessible and uh available and uh like i said i'm only a few calls away all right and uh yeah that's george