Sudbury Ward 7 Candidate Aaron Walsh: Have Outlying Communities Lost Their Voice?

ward seven is a tough ward. It's tough to get candidates to come in here from that area.

Aaron Walsh.

Aaron.(...) Good to see you. Nice to see you too. So tell, yeah, no, no problem. Tell us, um,(...) how's the campaigning going? The campaigning is going well. Um, that's a loaded question though. Okay. Expand on it. Yeah. It's, uh, in many ways, the best part of it is just talking to people, everyday people, and I guess confirming what you pretty much figured anyways, where the main topics, because I myself, uh, experience what they're experiencing and it's just good to hear most people think the same way that I do. And I'm not out in left field and that I'm, I have a pretty good indication of what the hot topics are in the city, but I've been really enjoying talking, talking with people and getting to know them. I really do enjoy that. So what are they, uh, what are some of the things that they're bringing up when you, when you talk to them, like your resident of the city, so you have, you know, what's going on, you have an idea of what's going on, but what's, what are the other people saying?(...) They, they pretty much figure the city has had a disconnect with the real challenges that everyday people are going through. Okay. And because my area is an outlying area, well, areas, you cover Capriol. Capriol. What else do you, what else is ward seven? Falcon bridge. Oh, that's out there too. Yeah. Skied.(...) Yes. So, you know, I see skied and Capriol as little islands on their own. Skied's not very big.

And we're, and that's the whole thing. We're losing services, whether it's, whether it's fire or whether it's post offices or whether it's services or you name it, police coverage. There's a fire hall out there. Yes. Okay. That,(...) yeah, that I know. But in general, the city around the city are losing services. They're not getting new ones. Okay.

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So you cover a lot of the outlining areas and anyways, get back to what are the, what are the residents concerned with?(...) Oh, again, they're concerned with the disconnect that the, the city has pretty much it's about centralization. They feel that they pay their fair share of tax because they talk about pre amalgamation and post amalgamation. What it was like pre amalgamation was they had representation. Well, pre amalgamation, they had their own mayors and their own councils and their own(...) budgets and, you know, they took care of themselves. And so they were aware of their needs and they took care of them. If you had a problem, you could call,(...) call someone right away. A lot of times they're your neighbor. Yeah. They experience the same things. And so they make the same decisions for the same reasons because

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they're in the same situations. And so they found after amalgamation little by little, they started losing their voice, they started losing their services. They started seeing their arenas, um, you degrade, they're not up kept. And that's just arenas. There's other, uh, buildings that are city owned that they kind of let go. And they feel all their money is going to downtown. All the money is going to the city. So you said that C word, that C word is centralization. I think that's what happened at WSIB recently. They went to a little more centralization. You have to either keep your job and in order to do so, you had to move to one of these three designated cities.

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So centralization, although it might be more efficient in some areas, uh, in some other areas, they absolutely lose their voice and that's what you're, that's what you're hearing. Oh, that's definitely what I'm hearing. Yeah. Okay. Feel heard. And currently, uh, you know, they, they don't,(...) and I guess it's the way that, uh, the city is,(...) is set up or whatever, um, where they don't feel they have representation, they're getting rid of the cans, the community action. So what do you know why they're getting, I don't know why, but why are they getting rid of the cans? They say they weren't working properly. They say they weren't functioning(...) and they had a better solution, which is the community affiliate registry program. Is that, is that going to cost the taxpayer? Actually, did the can cost the taxpayer?

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Oh, they had small budgets. So to a small degree, they had small budgets and, you know, a couple of thousand dollars to use towards projects and things like that. So this, this new name of whatever they're going to call it, is that going to have a budget as well from the city? Yeah. And I have to correct myself community affiliate registry program, which acronym is CRAP.

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Okay.

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I was trying to put that together in my head. Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I remember talking about that on my show(...) on the radio in the morning and, uh, I saw that right away. I was like, Oh, they're getting rid of the cans and with this new program, you know, it's called CRAP. It was crap. And I posted it, you know, it was shortly after that, so I changed it. I wonder who came up with that acronym.

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I put the acronym together. They didn't use the acronym. It's just, they use the long form. Yeah. And then I said, Oh, you know, what's interesting about that? That's the acronym. Okay. Oh, that's, uh, that's pretty, pretty cool. But what I found that new system or the new program they're going to install is more based on community action groups, right? Let's say, uh, like social, uh, program, like social, not for profits kind of things. So, you know, it's again going to be more centralized. So we have these groups that are looking after vulnerable(...) people in our society, whether they're LGBTQ or black lives matter or any of these groups, which are, which are fine. Yeah. And they need representation, but the money that was going to the cans for representation for all of the outlanding areas, community action networks,(...) all that money now is going to be funneled into, uh, these other organizations. Crap and everything else that crap represents.

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Okay. Well, you got to call it what?(...) Listen, it, I can say crap a lot faster than whatever that long word is. Remember, remember when, uh, valet or CBRD or whatever it was took over. Inco, it was a long name. I don't know what they called it. It was like five different letters.(...) I could say valet a little bit easier.

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Moving along to, um,(...) uh, let's, let's, let's look at, uh, taxes, roads, infrastructure and accountability. There's a whole bunch of their, um, taxes. Of course they're necessary evil. I'm getting to the point where, okay. Yeah, I can see a justified increase, um, this year coming up though. So the, the, the budget for 27 is, I think it's pretty much in pencil. They have to verify or go through it in December when they do.(...) And it's coming in at, uh, oh crap. There's that word. There's that word again.

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It's, it's, it's coming in. And if I check my notes, it'll be north of five and a half percent for sure. For sure. For sure.(...) Um,(...) that's going to give a lot of their residents a kick in the pants when it comes to their wallet and especially affordability, uh, these days. Um, you know, as a counselor out in ward seven, what can you actually do about it? Do you have any, do you have any pull? Well, I mean, uh, year one voice, uh,(...) 12 and the mayor, but, uh, but you can definitely do your best to be as transparent as possible with, uh, your,(...) people that you represent. And that's exactly what I'll do now. Affordability in Canada since 2015, the cost of living has gone up over 30% in Canada, which is high, which is huge. That's a 30% has gone up. We're not making 30% more money to make up for that. Right. Since 2015. Depending on what people are making less, uh, or, or jobs aren't as available as they are at that time either. Well, your dollars not being stretched as far, you know, I talk about(...) four bags of groceries used to be a hundred bucks. Now it's one bag of groceries is a hundred bucks. And that's just your normal(...) plastic bag. I remember doing a search cause I saw this on a, on a, on a video somewhere. And they said the cost of living has gone up so much. They did a search about if someone was making minimum wage in the 1970s, what buying power, like, what would they have to be making today? Per hour to have the same buying capacity of somebody making minimum wage in the 1970s? Could you guess around what you'd have to be making now to make up for what you could be, you know, the equivalent of what you'd be making in the mid 1970s? I'll take a stab at 26, 27 bucks an hour. Close. It's $55 an hour. 55.

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Oh, I think that's high(...) for the, just the buying power. The buying power. Okay. The ability to go out and if you look at it, uh, back in the day, you could have, uh, you know,(...) and you know, a job, a lot of jobs started out as minimum wage. I even hear, uh, mining jobs and things like that. They're making a low wage. They're still able to go out and afford a home and have a family and things like that, whereas today, not so much. And we're seeing that. And so if, if you talk about that in the, you know, going on in the country(...) with the, uh, you know, the way that our economy is going and our dollar isn't being stretched as much, the city only puts an extra burden as taxes increase here. So you have federal taxes, provincial taxes and, uh, the municipal, municipal taxes. Yeah. And so it's, I don't know. So you asked what could a counselor do about all of that. And all I can do is, um, try to, to make decisions that would either keep taxes the same or lower them. And people say, well, that's a grand thing to say. But there as a former business owner myself of multiple businesses,(...) your business doesn't survive if you don't find a way to make it profitable.(...) And unfortunately our city,(...) probably because there's not a lot of business owners running the city, uh,(...) don't have the same accountability as a business. And they have to go back to the taxpayer for more money. It'd be great if a business owner could get, do the same thing. It's not practical. It doesn't happen. You can't, if you're offering a service or a product, you can't charge triple your product just because you need to make the money. The market will. You, you can only charge what the market will bear.(...) So now that we've learned that you've been in business before,(...) you have a different mindset than someone who hasn't been in business because when you're in business, you, it's a bad idea to spend more than you bring in. Sure. You go, you might have a product or service that you're offering to start out with and you may go incur some debt to get it going because that's sometimes most of the time what you have to do. But you know, should you get into the hot seat on, uh, in ward seven, uh,(...) how would you look at that with your business experience? Would you look at it as empty, uh, you know, endless pools of money or would you look at it from the point of view as running it more as a business? Cause the, the city of Sudbury is a business. It's what's a corporation from what, uh, from what I understand, which is a business.(...) So how would you approach the, uh, how would you approach the budget when it comes to spending? I would do it very much like a business. Yeah. Uh, accountability. So I talk about this. That's one of the things that the city says that it should be and says that it is an air accountable,(...) accountable to the provincial government. Okay. They're accountable to the federal government. They're accountable to KPMG or whoever's doing this. So hold it there. What I'm hearing(...) is they're accountable to their bosses. And they're not accountable to the taxpayer. Okay. From my experience of what I see, if anyone has a different perspective and control that they are, then I'm open to that. But from what I see and what I'm hearing, they're not. Okay. They need to switch their accountability. And so my accountability is to the taxpayer. Right. And I look at it in terms of these are hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. Uh, if somebody gave me hundreds of millions of dollars in my business, I could possibly turn that into a profit if, you know, if you manage correctly and why aren't cities turning profits? Why can't they build things that make money for the taxpayers? The government's constantly saying we're making investments, whether it's municipal, provincial or federal. And investment(...) implies that you're putting money into something that's going to yield a return. That's what the word investment means. I would agree. Right. Yeah. I would really agree with that. That sounds right. It(...) sounds reasonable, but they're, they're calling it an investment, but really it's just a cost and they're just building something. And in terms of, we're going to talk about this. We're probably going to get to it anyways with our arena. Yeah. So our arena, it's going to cost, they say $200 million.

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Now, it's going to now cost, it was going to cost $1.2 million a year to run, but in recent, um, you know, news that's out there or whatever people are talking, it's going to cost $600,000 a year to run. Are you talking about the maintenance or what part of it? Just, just running the cost to run the arena. So it's not going to make a profit as well. No arena. Yeah. No arena in this town makes a profit. No one makes profits. Even, even in, uh, North America, arenas, arenas aren't profit makers. Not even ones in, uh, down South. Arenas aren't profit makers. They're community, uh, gathering places and you know, they bring, they do something with the economy that they themselves don't leisure services,

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hope filling a hotels, hotel tax. Like you can probably make some arguments that they generate, uh, economy, you know, for the economy.(...) So as for the arena and it's, uh, you know, it's, is it, is it an investment?

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So I'll ask you if they're going to lose money every single year,(...) I guess you can call it an investment, but it's not an investment. Would it be a good investment? If someone came to you and said, look, I'm just gonna, can I have $200 million of your money?

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Oh, by the way, I'm going to need another 600,000 every year, um, for a long time. Up and up and up probably as the cost of living goes up.(...) Sounds like a good investment. Are you in?

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I don't know.

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So these are the taxpayers were asking this up, right? So if it is an investment and I don't mind using the term investment, if it actually is an investment. So yeah, for, so that word you're using investment means you put a dollar in, you get a dollar 10 back or more. I think that's what the common person would, or anyone with any education in business or just the average investor would, would, uh, have that definition. So is it, you know, they're already knee deep in, uh, in the mud over there doing whatever it is that they're doing, whatever stage that they're at. Maybe they have to redo something, but is it a good idea or a bad idea or where, where are you on this whole arena thing? I want a new arena. Yeah. I love hockey. Hockey player growing up. Yeah. Oh, you're one of those area. Well, I mean, it was my dad's dream for you to became my dream. Okay. Skating apart as far as, as he said, that I was skating before I could walk. Okay. Fair enough. And, uh, we go to the arena, uh, the outside, uh, ODRs. Yeah. You know, the, the, the ranks outside before school, this is kindergarten. And, uh, and then we come in afterwards, we practice, come back in. I do a hundred sit-ups, a hundred pushups. He gave me a drink with raw eggs and magnesium. So he was hardcore. I was kindergarten. Really? I'm not kidding. And then I'd walk to school. Yeah. And, uh, with no shoes. Well, no, it wasn't all those uphill downhills. Okay.

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You're realistic. For that, uh, but, uh,(...) but no, so hockey to me is near and dear. A lot of times when I lay down on my pillow at night, I picture myself out on the rink again, it's just, I love hockey so much it's part of me. Yeah. And I would love nothing more than to have a new arena. Okay. However, uh, as somebody who is a taxpayer, somebody who now wants to represent taxpayers in the area of the city, it does not make sense in terms of how they're putting it forward to have a new arena in our community. That's sustainable and makes, and is accountable to taxpayers. It's just this, this isn't. And another thing, this is a question. They, they were going to build an arena on the Kings way. And that even took a long time for them to make that decision. Yeah. It was back and forth and everything else that happened. And then finally they were going to go ahead with it and then whatever happened, the city council turned it down because why.

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They wanted it downtown. Well, maybe that's some of the reasons, uh,(...) that they would have, but they put it out in the public, the reason was because it cost $200 million.

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That's what happened. That's the reason they turned it down. It's costing too much money because originally it was going to cost less than that. Now they're saying the new arena downtown is going to cost what?

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500.

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Well, they, their official numbers say 200 million. They're still clinging to that. Even though most people who understand numbers and know it's going to be probably in and around the neighborhood, you just said 20, 27 rolls around. It'll be a brand new number.

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So the city doesn't want to.

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Don't want that to get out of the bag. They want to control that conversation and say, it's only going to be 200 million. Even at the point they're making some promotional videos saying they've already gone out and bought all the supplies pre-tariff so that way they don't have to the tariffs aren't going to affect(...) any of their construction costs, which I know they didn't, they couldn't have bought all of the materials to build an arena that size. And where is, where are they? Where's all the materials? I don't know. Maybe I don't know, but it's going to cost more than $200 million. How much are they already in to it? Right? Yeah. How much have they already spent?(...) Well, yeah, that's a, that's a number without getting into the weeds. That's(...) that's something that's still out there.

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Moving around, moving over to roads and actually how, how can we attract more business here in Sudbury? You know, the, the. By not chasing them away?(...) Yeah, well not chasing them away. You know, if you look at one of the mining support companies that have left town and gone North Bay, there's a bunch of jobs that have gone there.(...) There's a new facility going up, just opposite Maley Drive onto the side. I guess they're investing quite a bit in a new facility for their mining operation.

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You know,(...) if the city,(...) and we just use the word the city, which just. Yeah.(...) If. Yeah, because there's council and then there's the people that work at the city and different departments. So to attract new businesses, what, how can the city maybe reduce some of the red tape that, that exists when it comes to getting more, getting new business manufacturing,(...) you know, if you want to get into a manufacturing, like maybe get away from the mining and being so dependent on it, is there anything else that we can do? Cause we've got a lot of space. Yeah, like diversifying, right? Yeah. Well, you can't put all your eggs in one basket. And I think the city at least have said they've been trying to do that for years, to not, to not just rely so much on one industry. But I used to be the district manager for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.(...) There were two of us in town and I covered more(...) part of Sudbury and the North Shore Manitoulin and(...) businesses, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business Sudbury through their surveys. They do surveys once a month, pretty much with their businesses, with their members, businesses that belong to, to their organization. Yeah. And through their survey of all the businesses in Canada, Sudbury was deemed the hardest city to do business in Canada. Really?(...) Through their findings.(...) Uh, how? In what way? Well, like you said, red tape cost. Oh, okay.(...) Red tape means a lot of things. You can unpack red tape. It's, it's regulations, it's, it's permits, it's the cost of the permits. Yeah. It's the time it takes from the time you apply for a permit till the time you can actually put a shovel in the ground. And when you're in, when you're running a business time is of the essence. Right? So if they can find another community that would fast track, uh, that, and again, businesses about the investment and making a return on your, on your money. Right. They can't just sit around and wait. They need to move forward. Like you said, with their, with their operation. You have to move forward. Yeah. You have to move forward. Uh, you know, when it comes to construction, we don't have a lot of new young, uh, people in construction necessarily anymore. It's, you know, it's the larger organizations that are, that have the land. And they,(...) well,(...) just getting the younger entrepreneurs to actually build homes. So the homes aren't built by big home builders. You know, if we want to build homes in, uh, in the North, because we're going to have what, you know, the population going up, um, you know, just that's where the red tape(...) ties in. Obviously we don't have enough lumber for homes, right? Well, well, I think we've got a lot of trees out. When I look outside, I see a lot of trees, whether they're, whether they're the right kind is another, you know, the FBS PF. Or maybe it's land. We don't have enough land.

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Could be, it could be that could be something like that as well. I'm being facetious. Yeah. And doing that is obviously we can do it. It's just, you need to begin with the end in mind. You need these things. And how do we get ourselves out of the way? How does government get out of the way in order to allow people to complete the goals that government says they want in the first place, right? So it seems counterintuitive.(...) Uh, government a lot of times gets in there. They try helping(...) try less a lot of times and allow the businesses to do their thing and give them the tools they need in order to do it. Create the infrastructure for business to grow. It's like put the flower pot there, let the businesses grow, whatever, uh, business that they're going to, they're going to do,(...) uh,(...) homelessness, drug use, uh, all that, um,(...) it's a, it's, it's an intricate issue. It's not just a Sudbury issue. It's happening all over.

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Uh,(...) from your point of view, is there any reasonable way to try to steer the ship and cleaning up that in our own backyard? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things we can do. There's things other communities have done that we can take from. And I think in terms of going back to your last question about business too,

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business wasn't, you know, it's not a new thing. It's not a new thing to, to, uh, start a business and, and bring businesses to a community and it's an old thing. And so there's best practices that we can adopt that other communities have done. And it's the same thing with our now homelessness is a kind of a new thing. If you look at it in Canada, not that homelessness itself, but the increase in the fact that it's become such a crisis because of affordability, because of drug, you know, more drug use, more, I guess, uh, mental illness, uh, other, other things, it seems that it's very visible now. Very visible, correct. And there obviously is an increase, visible increase. We see it. We know that when, you know, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, even, uh, we didn't see this type of, uh, crisis happening, but we do now. And so what were some of the communities out there that have done things that work in their community with similar type, uh, problems, right? There, there has to be how many cities are in North America? How many cities are in the Western world that are facing a similar problem? There has to be solutions that have worked.(...) And I know of a few, but I can't say I'm not going to come to the table and offer this, I'm going to come to the table as a collaborative with a collaborative mindset and say, there's a way we can handle this. And I think it has to do with people who have encountered this in their lives and overcoming,(...) I think that's where it starts from. You get people together in organizations, people who've been there, done it. They relate to somebody who's on the street. Imagine if I went up to someone on the street and started talking to them.(...) I'm not going to be on their level. They're going to look at the way I'm dressed first of all, and they're going to say, no, you're not a credible person. You just can't relate because you haven't walked in those shoes. I haven't walked in those shoes and I'm not going to go out and say, and I'm not going to speak for them. Right. Right. But there are people who have(...) and they've come through it and we need to use them and they want to help because, because they've been through it and they realize

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how impactful it is when they overcome those challenges, whether it be(...) being on house for whatever particular time, we're addicted to whatever substance or going through a mental health, health crisis. How did they deal with those things? How did they overcome them? And then we need to(...) go to them and ask them what worked for you? What was it? How do we build in programs and(...) infrastructure that worked for you and how do we make it seamless? Again, other communities are a resource to look to, but I believe it's going to be people who have been there, done that, that are going to help people out of, you know,(...) meet them where they're at. Yeah. And support them afterwards. Support them afterwards. Similar to AA, right? Kind of thing where someone's been through it. Yeah.

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You're their mentor. And I've seen so many people's lives blessed by the program.

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You know, it's not perfect. Anything's not perfect, but take someone who's been there and done that to help someone else. Yeah. And be the mentor to(...) those that are in need. And that's not something I hear talked about. I don't hear anyone saying that that's an important piece of the puzzle.

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Okay. Uh, yeah, of all the candidates, there's been a few that, uh, really,(...) um, emphasize on the support after the after support because otherwise you're just going to relapse.

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On another topic, roads in greater Sudbury.

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Are we doing a good job with keeping them maintained? We're built on rock. We're built on some swampland in the various areas. But overall, are we...

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Where are we on this? How can we make it better? Because the roads are rough.

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If you're driving a car, especially a small car,(...) with say 15 inch wheels or smaller, you're going to take a beating. If you're buying a truck, you're going to take less of a beating. So, where are we? I think everyone just needs to get a truck. Have(...) you seen the price of fuel?

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Obviously. Obviously, we're kidding. No, I know. But what(...) can we do? Given our northern proximity to(...) where we are and what we're built on,(...) are we keeping up with road maintenance? Good question.

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I see people out all the time filling potholes. And then I see the potholes gone within 24 hours. If there's a rain, the potholes are back to being potholes again after being filled on an entire street. So, is our pothole patching working? There are stories of a pothole machine or whatever that's just sitting dormant that cost a lot of money and it's not being used. There's that. But this is the whole thing.

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Are our roads being built right in the first place to start off with? It's like anything.

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It's like building a home. If you don't start off with a foundation properly, it's going to cause you problems through a period. So, we've all heard the(...) frost freeze. It's really cold here. Big trucks from the mining. It takes wear and tear on our roads. And we know to some extent(...) that is true. All those things are factors. However, you know, one day about five years ago, I was listening to CBC Radio and they had an expert on a road export. And the interviewer from here was telling him about that. Saying, "Oh, well, we have really bad roads for all those reasons." And the person being interviewed, who's the expert on roads, said, "Hold on a second." He said, "You're saying your roads don't last very long?" "Oh, yeah, yeah, no, because we got the frost freeze, we got the(...) real cold weather, and we got the big trucks." And he said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I heard you, but there's no reason why you can't have roads that last 15 years."(...) And the host was beside himself. Well, this expert said, "This is what you got to do to build a proper road." And he explained it. "You have to go so far down, you have to use this particular dust,(...) you have to pat it down

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so much, you have to..." And he went through all of the engineering of a proper road. And he says, "Look, I know places that have bigger trucks than you and colder weather and more northern climates that their roads last 15 years. You need to have someone build your road properly, offers a warranty of so many years, and if something goes wrong with that road, they then are responsible for it, not the taxpayer." How do you know if that company will still be in business? "Well, that's one of the problems you might face. So there's another(...) solution. We had a company called Road Surface Recycling come into town. And they have a method of doing(...) shave and pave. It's like what we do anyways on our roads because we don't build them properly in the first place in the summer. So we're just constantly taking the top layer pretty much and just replacing it. And they take the current asphalt that's on the road,(...) mulch it up or whatever you want to do, crumble it up, and they add new material to it to make it(...) better quality. You know, bring it back to life, restore the asphalt material, and then lay it back down. So there's no(...) waste that goes to the landfill of(...) the previous asphalt. They use it to lay it down. They did some work already in Sudbury on the Kingsway, which is still there, and that was three years ago. It's still there. It's in good repair. But the city took exception to this company, and you can go online and read all about what the city accused them of and what their side is. But the bottom line is they only cost about a third of what we can do the roads for. So that would be a savings to Sudbury. If we're not going to build the roads right in the first place, if we used that particular type of technology, we'd be saving money. Driving on good roads at one third the price and being accountable to taxpayers. Do you know what section of the Kingsway that was?

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I do. On my show, they explained what it was, and I can't really remember. I believe it was around McDonald's, Costco area. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I can put it in the comments of this video, though, the exact... Because I'd like to go... I won't be going on that stretch today, but(...) was it on both sides, eastbound and westbound, or...? And again, I'm not sure about that. I don't have the... Okay. So somewhere between McDonald's and Costco. As far as I know, it might have been a little further down, but what I'll do is I can let you know, and then on this video for people watching this, I'll put the exact area that they did the work. I wonder if that pavement smells different from other pavement.

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I do not. No, I've never thought of that.(...) What would be the reason? I don't know.(...) See if there's... Maybe there's glue in it. Who knows?(...) Okay. Moving on.(...) Any last things that you want to say before we get to wrap up? To your... To Ward 7? Yeah. I think(...) the important thing, the city itself says that it wants to be accountable(...) to... It wants to be accountable. It wants to be transparent.

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It wants to have integrity.

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And these are things that I think are good. I don't think the city needs to reevaluate their goals of(...) what they want to accomplish. I just think they're accountable, transparent, and integral to government and to other organizations and not particularly the taxpayer. So I think if they just use those terms and use them towards the taxpayer, that's exactly what I would do. Open communication is one of my main things I want to bring to my leadership in Ward 7 and to the city, is that I can't promise to do everything. I can let you know what my goals are or what I like to do because they're mainly based on what the people I'm representing want because I'm representing them.(...) And once I know what they want, I consult them, I bring that to the table, I fight tooth and nail for what they need, and(...) I report back to them because I'm accountable to them. Okay, how did we do? We tried to do this. This is what happened. This is as far as I can take it. Do you guys have any other ideas other than what I've already done? Sometimes, you'll find, citizens will come up with really cool ideas. So would you be willing to have like town hall meetings maybe three times a year with your constituents? I'm not afraid of people. And I think as the representative, I need to be with them as often as can be and make those town hall meetings effective in terms of communication. They can also act as a social, a time to get together and meet one another and talk about the(...) things that we bring to our community, networking, the strengths that we have(...) in our communities and capitalize on that. Facilitate.

(...)

People want to serve their community. They want to contribute to their community. And I think a councillor needs to facilitate that. And they need to take the ideas from the community because they know what their communities need.(...) And then we need to do our best to work together to bring those things to pass and be a team player.(...) And I'm not saying that, just words. I would put that into action and that's what I do. It's just my philosophy in life. Aaron Walsh, hey, thanks for joining us. Thank you. It's been

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