Michael McIntosh for Mayor: Fixing Sudbury's Garbage, Housing, Roads & Transit Challenges

(...) Running from Mayor, we have Michael McIntosh here in the studio. Michael, good to see you. Good to meet you. Good to see you. So tell me, you're running from air. What's prompting you to do so? Well, I mean, the first reason I wanted to run for, what really prompted me to do so was,(...) I wanted the garbage picked up every week. And I thought that was the best way to... Get the attention? Yeah, to get the attention to that issue. Okay. Would you like me to talk some more about that right now? Yeah, elaborate. Cause I know a lot of... So there's the rat issue in Minnow Lake. Someone suggested, I don't remember who, but in order to get past that(...) big problem that's there right now, what if they picked up the garbage every single week? Yeah, who would talk about leaving garbage out for a short amount of time might mean less rats, right?(...) (Laughing) Yeah. Seems like a no brainer. Yeah. But I mean, it's also a public health issue. I think it hurts investment for our city because when it's not picked up, people get fused over and leave it out and you drive around and you see piles of garbage on the street everywhere. Imagine driving a client out and say around the city and being like, all right, I'd like you to build the manufacturing to plant here. And there's garbage all over the place. It's a public health issue, as you mentioned, with the rats. And also like, imagine if you're a senior that doesn't drive and like an unaired condition, one bedroom apartment and you miss garbage day or you're not well enough for it. And you're stuck with garbage in your house for another three weeks. Yeah, which could be a long time, especially if you live in the city where you don't, you may not, or an apartment where you just don't have space. Yeah, no, it's an easy enough, but it seems like an easy, not a nuisance for someone who has a two car garage or something to keep it for that long. But, you know, I know people who have a family of three in a two bedroom apartment, where do you put it? Yeah, exactly. Okay.

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Aside from the garbage, what other, have you been out door knocking?

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I haven't done much door knocking because I'm just recovering from a broken foot. I was an air cast for six weeks. Ooh, okay. Okay, that's fine. So for the people that you are talking to, what are they like, what are they saying?(...) Well, there's always the ever present concerns about roads in our city. Yeah. Always going to be a problem here. Yeah, so there's- Obviously the homeless crisis I live downtown, I spend most of my time downtown where that's most visible. Yep.(...) And those would think would be the major issues. I mean, of course there's the cost of housing. Yeah, yeah. So what can the city do? Can the city do anything from the housing cost standpoint, specifically,(...) you know, you as the mayor, if, you know, say you're sitting in that chair, what can you actually do? Well, I mean, one very easy, very low cost thing we could do is we could change zoning laws to make it easier to build higher density. Okay. I've advocated before, we should allow four plexes in all residential areas. And the province has done some work to make this easier. But for example, I live on Riverside Drive. I have a big, nice apartment block on one side of me, big, nice apartment block on the other side of me. I'm zoned R2. That means if like, let's say, God forbid my house burned down from where it's owned by the property. The biggest thing you could build there legally is a duplex. Okay. That makes sense when they're trying to increase density and infill and we have a housing shortage. I don't think it does. Yeah, so then policies would have to be rejigged. Well, zoning is entirely within the city's control. I mean, it's fun. It should be functionally almost zero cost to change it. Council vote, some staff hours, like that's a very easy, very low cost solution that we can implement almost immediately. Right, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So, or year over year up 7.7% of the city when we're seeing a decrease in a lot of other areas. So, you know, it's an issue that affects a lot of people. So, some of the candidates mentioned that if you have more housing, affordable housing, that would help get the homeless, maybe not homeless and get them sheltered. Oh, absolutely. And even like, we are seeing some housing disruption aside or across from one of my properties in the Donovan, there's a multiplex going up there. There's a multiplex going up by Bayview's Books. There's a Scotia Tower conversion downtown. Like will all of those be affordable? Not necessarily, but any housing that we are building is helping because you know, you're no longer, if you can only afford a $1,300 unit, but there's only so many units available, you're suddenly competing with people that have a lot more money with you, you make more money than you're making it hard to find housing. So, even, you know, any housing helps, even market rent housing helps with this crisis. Okay, so going into the(...) drug addiction and the homelessness, what would be one of your,(...) like what's on your platform in order to help clean that up?(...) Okay, well,(...) as far as the drug addiction issues, there's not a lot the city can do directly to solve addiction issues, it's a health issue. So that's prevention jurisdiction and you know, we're not swimming in money here. The aging infrastructure, we have a arena we have to pay off, which I was in favor of building by, well, I was in favor of location by the way. I mean, getting back to the garbage issue, in 25 years we're gonna have to replace the dump, which is another $200 million that we're going to have to find. And so, yeah, there's not a lot we can directly do about it, but as for how to deal with, which is not the direct question, but I think they're very related. As for how to deal with issues like the homelessness and the encampment downtown, I've said before I'd be in favor of, are you familiar with, and some of your listeners, I'm sure will be, are you familiar with how housing is handled in mobile camps like Detour Lake and remote mine sites? No, not at all. So, yeah, tell us. So basically, and I've worked in these places, there are modular housing buildings, there are a bunch of trailers that go together like Lego. I looked when I started my campaign and(...) there's a used one, for just this example, there's a used one for sale for $750,000 that would house 40 people. So I'd be in favor of purchasing one of those and locating it on a site that's different from the current energy court site because-- It's tainted. It's not the best site for that either. And also it doesn't make sense to go to $200 million arena right beside our homeless encampment. So I'd be in favor of establishing another site and buying a unit like that, that could be done relatively quickly.(...) Probably not before the snow falls this year, but once you write the check, those are designed to go on trucks, be assembled, and we'd have people inside instead of outside. And also people who still wanna stay outside, you could have that and the encampment on the same site and people decide they're ready or able to seek help or follow the rules that would be required, then well, that's very(...) transitional housing because you just transition right across the lot into-- Into the normal shelter. Yeah, into the facility. So they use these at remote camps like mining sites? Yes, they use these at remote camps like mining sites like the oil sites like Cote Gold, just now in 45 minutes north of town. That's where they house those workers. Okay, so it works. It works. I've lived in one for,(...) probably last year before I changed jobs, I probably spent more of my time in one of them than I did at home. But I've also stayed in worst hotel rooms. So what's it like in one of those(...) places? It depends. Sometimes you have a shared washroom facilities. Sometimes you have your own ensuite washroom.(...) You look at, basically picture like a low budget motel. Yeah, I kind of picture a dormitory.(...) Generally you do have, or actually know by regulation now, which helps us because I would like to target the used market for these because there is a used market. By regulation now, unless you're in development, you have to have your own private room. So everyone would get a small private room. You may have shared washroom facilities depending on what's available, how much you find, how much budget you want to spend for it. Yeah, yeah, okay. And normally they include a cooking facility in with them and occasionally offices or a gym. So depending on what we can find for what budget we want to allocate, you could have onsite services. To help out? Yes. Okay, okay. Maybe laundry. I mean, maybe laundry. I was thinking more like job help or perhaps even a safe injection site. Okay, other services like that. I was thinking just- Yeah, supports. Yeah. I would normally do have laundry in them, yes. Okay, okay. So that would be the housing part. How would,(...) you know, how, for the projects that are going on and including, you know, your proposed idea for getting people off the street, what's the best way to pay for all this stuff?(...) Well,(...) as I said, it's, we currently spend, I think, the number is $1.9 million just maintaining the energy cord encampment. Okay. So. What's there that costs 1.9?(...) I mean, well, that,(...) I believe that stat includes all the service, emergency service calls. Oh, yeah. There's also, of course, garbage collection. There's the warming center. Okay.

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I don't have the exact breakdown, but- Yeah, no, I just didn't know it was that high for that(...) location. I know there's a building there. I see some dumpsters there. That is the stats that I've seen. Like if someone wants to challenge me on that or has better stats, but- Yeah, so the- That's what my quick research indicated, so. So there is a cost to running energy court. Yes, it's not as people imagine that the city has just dumped them in the parking lot and washed their hands of it. There is a cost to running that facility, so. Yeah. I think we could get more for $1.9 million than we're getting for that. Yeah, and then when you mentioned to cover the cost for any EMS services that need to go there. I assume that's in that statistic, but I don't have that information really available. It's sort of hard to research when you're on the outside looking in. That's right. You may not have the same access to all the information from the inside. Yeah, you probably,(...) you'd have to send requests. You might have to FOIA it. Yeah, and then- It's kind of difficult to get the exact breakdown on a lot of these things. Okay.

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Moving along, you know, since you're going for mayor,

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property taxes, they cover, well, the whole budget comes from property taxes and from other sources of,(...) I think it's(...) provincial, maybe federal government, is that right? Yeah, we get grants or- Okay. We get little treats here and there when we go hand in hand to the province. They call them little bon-bons. Yeah.(...) Okay. The majority of it is yes, property taxes. There's some user fees from GSCU. Levees and other things like that.(...) Okay. So(...) from what I understand, some of the reserves are empty right now and we're looking at a pretty healthy

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property tax increase coming up this year, you know, possibly north of five or six or maybe,

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I'll leave it there because I don't know what the number is going to be, but are there efficiencies? And that's the word that everyone throws around, efficiencies within the city that can be acted upon in order to,

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keep the increase reasonable?(...) I mean, everyone loves to say they'll find efficiencies because that's the magic word that says I'm not going to make anything more expensive and- It's the buzzword right now. I'm going to pay money for you. Yeah. There's probably some that can be found, but I think we need to look,(...) if we want to keep a property tax to below or at inflation, like I don't think it's realistic to have- Zero. I would love to strive to do that, but I think we need to look at other mechanisms to keep that down and efficiencies. I don't think it, every, you know, as you said, efficiencies is the buzzword. Everyone says they're always going to find you efficiencies. I'm sure four years ago, people were here saying they're going to find efficiencies. I'm sure four years before that, I don't think it's going to get us there. Yeah, yeah. And here we are.

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So one idea I had is the city of Toronto, a group negotiated a deal with the province where they uploaded the Garden Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway back to the province for, and that's going to save them $1.9 billion over 10 years. Okay. We have several roads that the city maintains like a large section of Highway 144. Yeah. It used to be Highway 144 out of Lavette, there used to, you know,(...) parts of Highway 17 that you could argue are essential provincial transit links. Correct. And I would like to see if we could negotiate some kind of similar deal or some kind of cost sharing, because I don't think it's fair that(...) the city shares, or, give me a second, that the city shoulders the entire building burden for maintaining those roads, the whole province uses. Right, right. So, you know, depending on that one, that might help us get, or depending on what kind of deal could start there, that might help us find some actual significant money for roads. Okay. Without, you know, combing over the books to try and find a 0.01% saving. Yeah. Which might not even be there anymore, and it really isn't gonna get us there. So, you said roads, how about roads and infrastructure? Are we keeping up? I know there's, I think there's a deficiency over the last number of years where,

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I think the number is about between 80,

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around 81, 82 million dollars that needs to be spent on roads and infrastructure to keep it at the status quo, like at the maintain level, but they've been spending quite a bit less(...) roads. The city's in the business, the city should be in the business of creating the infrastructure for the citizens and business. That's what the city should be doing. But(...) how can we get things back to,(...) you know, a standard where everyone complains about roads? Some neighborhoods have their water, the(...) water pipes to the houses being relined,

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kind of like a stent goes in, and then(...) whatever happens. Yeah, I'm familiar. It's like a lining. Yeah, it's like a lining. So, how(...) can we get the infrastructure back to where it's supposed to be without breaking the bank? It'll be a long process. It won't happen overnight. Like, and to fix our roads properly, I think would be a multi-decade process, because we're fighting geography. Like when you just,

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our roads are like a fixer. It's the fastest way to go through this without giving a lecture on civil engineering.

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Take your time, give a lecture. Yeah. Like a lot of our roads are just sandwiched on top of rock, maybe a tiny bit of substrate on there, to not just essentially continue to waste money and do a patch job and do it properly. You'd have to dig down six feet and put proper egg you would get. Like so.(...) I would support a program that looks like slowly doing that(...) over a long period of time.(...) But like you said, we're already looking at a 5% tax increase. I mean, it's gonna be a struggle just to keep roads in the current condition, they're in, unless everyone wants to pay 7% taxes or higher. Yeah. So we're in a really hard place. Like I'm not gonna say there's a magic solution. Part of the reason we're in a hard place because we never built the roads properly in the first place, but there's no overnight. Hey, I'm not gonna sit here and say after four years of me being mayor, the roads are gonna be great. Like it's gonna take longer than that. Okay, yeah, to be realistic.

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The event center downtown, you'd mentioned that you were for it. You wanna expand on that one just a little bit? As for the location. Okay. It was just basic urban planning 101.(...) The final form it took and the budget. Well, maybe we didn't need to go that crazy, but I'm obviously the fact that it even comes up anymore seems a little ridiculous. Like we're not gonna cancel it. We spent $100 million on it, doing any kind of course change,

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just be burning money. It's essential to the businesses downtown. Like it should be good for densification.(...) It makes good urban planning sense.(...) It's expensive, but that's what we're doing now. And we just have to try and get the best return on investment we possibly can out of it. When it comes to the budget, budget for 26 was about $870 million.

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Portion of that comes from the taxes and either portion comes from other areas. Is there, do we need a budget that high here in Sudbury or can we actually, you know, try to lower it somehow?

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I mean,(...) I don't think we can to be honest. Okay. Like we'll look at what we just talked about. You have infrastructure gaps, we have service gaps. Like you don't fix those by spending less money. Might be able to use the money we're spending better, but you know, the mat(...) having it lower would be a back to our magic 0% tax increase scenario we talked about just purely out of inflation. Like it's not gonna get lower. I don't think we can lower the overall operating budget. And again, if we find efficiencies, then why would we lower it? There's things that we need that we'd spend it on. Right. So I don't think lowering overall budget is gonna happen and I don't think we need to. Okay.

On a different note, when it comes to(...) city staff,

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would it be a good idea when somebody retires to maybe not fulfill that position and maybe even join some departments together? Like are we bloated with city staffers? Well that would have to be,(...) that's too general of a question to possibly answer that. Okay. It would have to be on a case by case basis. Yeah. We may actually need to hire more positions in some areas. Yeah. And there may be some positions that can be done, that can be done to, as you said, but that'd be highly case by case basis. You'd have to look at-- All the redundancy cases. Pretty much every file, like. Yeah. You'd have to do a full audit. Okay.(...) It might be beneficial to come up,

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it might be beneficial to do that and come up with a plan to say, okay, when this position retires, et cetera, but I don't think that has been done so far. So yeah, before looking at that.

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I know there is just, not too long ago, there was one of the(...) top managers at the city that has retired, but obviously that position is already filled with(...) someone else.(...) That might be a position where you can't get away with being empty, it has to be there. But at some other, like,(...) sometimes you hear stories, and these are just stories of the worker giving the paperwork to the manager, who gives it to the manager, who gives it to another manager

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before anything gets done. Is there,(...) and I've heard this from

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some of the frontline ground floor workers that are doing stuff. So yeah, everyone's saying, talking the efficiency word, but is it realistic to(...) look at each department and(...) bang out whatever needs to be done to make things happen more effectively?

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I mean, it should be done periodically to look at that. Most private companies do efficiency audits. As to the stories you hear having to work that worked at large organizations, like, I'm sure that does happen sometimes, and I'm sure in some places, there might even be decisions where that does happen a hundred percent of the time, but is it buddy at the desk next door, seeing their coworker grab a file, hand it out, and the file hand it out, when really it's just going through a proper escalation chain, and he's complaining about so-and-so, he thinks he's lazy. Having worked in organizing, I kind of take some of that with like, yes, what you're, how it looks could be what's happening, or that could be what's happening, what's actually happening, we don't know. Okay, red tape when it comes to building.

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Building new businesses here in town is one thing, but red tape when either building a house or a private residence, whatever, a house garage or a deck.

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Is there, does there seem to be two sets of rules, or are we all running on the same(...) level playing field, and where I'm going with this is as of a few weeks ago,(...) although millions of dollars are being spent on the event center, they still don't have a class B estimate.(...) From what I understand, a class B estimate is the final drawings.

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How can something go ahead and be built when if you're a homeowner, you need to have everything, all your documents in before you can really legally put a shovel in the ground. Are we running a two tier system? Well, I mean, we're probably running a three tier system. There's probably gonna be different rules for levels of government. There's going to be different rules if you're a business, for business use, and there's going to be different rules if you're a homeowner, for homeowner use, like. But getting back to(...) what you said about a class B proposal on--

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On the event center? Yeah.(...) I don't know if it's actually that different. Like, I don't know if you need your full ESA electrical drawings up when you do your framing, like if you're building an extension on your house. So it seems like a macrocosm of that.(...) Like, something you can correct me if you know. No, I just ask questions other than, you know-- Yeah, I may be wrong about this, but I'm, as I said, I think you can stud frame and then have ESA come by later. So I feel like it's probably back scaled up. Okay. The thing with that is that you don't know where the cost is gonna stop. That is the problem. So it's great. Shovels are in the ground.(...) Micropiles probably being redone or something. Who knows? Somebody knows. But the overall cost is, you know, it's budgeted, but is,(...) we know who's gonna pay for it. Yes. It's gonna be the grandkids of the kids or something like that. So they say, and who is they? Well, I'm just, you know, going on the info that other candidates have voiced their concerns from their constituents. So,(...) anyhow, moving along. I would say you'd have to ask the council what voted on it. Yeah. Okay. I approve the spending without the full estimates. Fair enough. I feel like the process is kind of rushed because after the cat collapsed, everyone just wanted to finally put this behind us. But, yeah.

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Is there anything else that you wanna cover before wrapping up that we've missed that is important to your campaign that you wanna get out to, you know, all the citizens of Greater Sudbury? Yes. And although I hate saying, I'm going to make this improvement and promising this because again, with all the legacy costs we're committed to, I think it's very important that we extend transit hours way. Someone else mentioned that as well. Keaton mentioned it originally, but he hasn't talked about it since, so I'm kinda working on it. Because I think it's important. Yeah, there was(...) another candidate. I'm trying to remember who, but he also said,

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it was Mateo

(...) He's running in war 12 and he said, "Extend the bus hours." Because it's just not,

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there's gaps. Well, also like, good jobs for young people with low barriers to entry in this town or healthcare and trades. Yeah.(...) I've been welding spectra, I've been in trades for probably 22 years now. Most trades jobs in the city start at 6 a.m. Yeah. Will not get you there at 6 a.m. Like I've seen, I've personally known and seen lots of young people that graduate from Cambrian, wanna get the job they went to school for and get up looking because, well, I can't afford a car until I get a job, so I can't get there, so there's no point. You know what, you are right. You're correct in that because

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the trades, they do start early. I remember when I worked in trades in a former life, we started at 6.30 and it was,

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you know what, I had to get up shortly after five. Now I know that the mining might be the same thing, especially if(...) you live out of town.(...) For anyone that commutes that works in the mines, be it Lavack, Onaping,(...) wherever you are,(...) but if you're in town, the bus, it's tough to get to work if you don't have wheels just yet. Oh, even if you're in town, even if you're at(...) one of the welding shops just(...) down the street off of South, there are several welding shops within the city, within the general city of Wyoming, just as an example.

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They're gonna start their shift at 6 a.m., 6.37 at the latest. When your earliest bus starts running at six,(...) you maybe have to get a connecting bus, like good luck getting there on time. So how do they manage now? What do they do, get a ride from a coworker or? You know, you get a ride from a coworker if you're lucky. I mean, if you're lucky you live close enough, maybe your parents will help you.

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I've known people who took cabs, who just made the ultimate financial transition and spent(...) half of their paycheck on cabs for the first months. But as I said, many of their young people just give up and move elsewhere or take lower skilled jobs. It's really not taking advantage of a wave of fuel just from an economic standpoint on this. So you mentioned the trades. How can we get more young people into the trades? Well, I mean, most young people who grow up or spend time in Sudbury consider it. Yeah. I don't think we have a problem with the interest in trades in this town. It's, again, being able to get them to work, I think it's one of the biggest barriers I hear talking to young people.(...) And that's a real thing. It is a very real thing. Okay.

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Again,(...) we talked about the tax increase. We talked about a multimillion dollar deficit on roads. I know it's a cost increase, but I don't think running the bus for an extra two hours in the morning, I think we'll reap more benefits from that with(...) getting our young people employed and keeping our young people in town in the North.

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I think that would be a worthwhile investment. That'd be beneficial. Yes.

Well, on that note, Michael, I wanna thank you for joining us here on Love the North

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