My platform for District 7 — Kingscourt-Rideau Heights
I have carefully reviewed the proposed MSC model for our water and wastewater infrastructure, and several concerns deserve a direct answer. This proposal is fundamentally a change in financing structure and borrowing capacity, not simply an infrastructure fix, and the real question is whether that restructuring actually improves efficiency, accountability, transparency, and long-term cost to residents. Municipal borrowing limits exist for a reason, they protect taxpayers from excessive long-term exposure, so any mechanism that expands borrowing capacity beyond those limits deserves genuine scrutiny rather than quiet acceptance.
Governance and oversight also remain unresolved in my view. I want clear answers on how much Council oversight will exist over borrowing decisions, what public accountability mechanisms will be in place, and how operational independence is maintained given the overlap in leadership between Utilities Kingston and the proposed MSC. Water and wastewater systems are critical public health infrastructure, and Ontario has already lived through the consequences of insufficient oversight in Walkerton, a history I raise not as a prediction but as a reminder of why robust safeguards exist. With a $1.3 billion infrastructure deficit still unmanaged, I believe we need to show that existing assets are being managed responsibly before we expand borrowing capacity or structural complexity.
Ultimately, the burden of proof lies with the proposal, not with the residents who ask questions about it. Before I would support a change of this magnitude, I need to see it demonstrably improve financial sustainability, strengthen governance and accountability, and maintain or improve public safety oversight. Our own experience with the Kingston Area Taxi Commission shows exactly why these safeguards matter, and I intend to hold this proposal to that same high standard.
As this is such a high stakes item why has council elected to move forward, ours with a "soft yes" as he calls it? For an item worth into the billions, why did they not vote to put it on the ballot this October?
The initial alarm over $400,000 in unaccounted funds was avoidable, because we now know exactly where that money went. $262,000 covered an Ontario Superior Court labour dispute judgment against the KATC, between $30,000 and $40,000 is owed directly to the CRA in unpaid payroll taxes, and roughly $167,000, nearly half of the KATC's entire 2025 operating budget, was spent on consultants and legal fees. On April 7, 2026, Council voted unanimously to advance up to $400,000 from the City's reserves to cover these costs, including a forensic audit estimated at $50,000 to $100,000, a figure that could still climb higher, with all of it falling on taxpayers.
Here is my concern. The money is already accounted for and we know where it went, so spending tens of thousands more on a forensic audit to retrace funds that are already documented is not accountability, it is an expensive way of confirming what we already know, with little realistic chance of recovering anything for taxpayers. A forensic audit also will not explain why meeting minutes and agendas went missing, because that is a governance failure, not a financial one, and what I believe we actually need instead is a Governance Gap Study.
City Councillors sat directly on the KATC Board throughout this entire collapse, and any member who completed onboarding and fulfilled their fiduciary duties had access to the commission's finances and the looming lawsuit, yet none of that information reached City Hall until after the damage was done. I want answers to the questions that actually matter: did appointed Councillors complete onboarding and sign the required documentation, why did financial information fail to flow back to City Hall, and why are meeting minutes and agendas missing. As Kingston moves toward complex new models like the MSC for water and wastewater, carrying these same governance and communication failures into high-stakes infrastructure puts more than public money at risk, it puts public health on the line.
I believe too much city business is still conducted behind closed doors, away from the public view it deserves. It feels like we are heading toward more time in camera than in open council, and that does not sit well with me. Council's business belongs in plain view, debated openly where residents can see it, not settled quietly behind closed doors, and that is a standard I will hold myself and my colleagues to if elected.
Too often, I see city decisions made ward by ward and department by department, without anyone connecting the dots between them. Councillors vote on issues that affect the whole city, not just their own ward, so I do not think we can afford to govern in silos. My approach is to keep a finger on the pulse of all of Kingston, from the MSC to the taxi commission to everything in between, so that city-wide decisions genuinely support daily life here in Ward 7. Good governance connects the dots, it does not just check boxes ward by ward.
Council recently voted to increase its own pay by 19 percent, justified as catching up on several years of modest or skipped cost-of-living adjustments. That is not how cost-of-living works for most people. Many Kingston workers went without meaningful raises during the same period and simply absorbed it, with no compounded, multi-year top-up waiting for them once things stabilized.
If every group whose income was frozen or reduced during that period had since received a compounded increase like this, on top of resuming normal annual adjustments, it simply would not be sustainable. It only happened here because council was setting its own compensation.
An increase of this size should not have been decided by council alone. Ontario law already allows municipalities to place a question directly on the municipal ballot, so residents could have had a real voice on something this significant, either through that mechanism or a genuine public consultation process, rather than council settling it entirely on its own terms.
Patchwork or proper planning?
It's time to shift from patching problems to actually maintaining our roads. Too often, road maintenance is purely reactive: a pothole appears, we patch it, and we move to the next one. That's a Band-Aid approach, and it's costing us more than it should.
When we repair a road, the question shouldn't just be how quickly can we fix this. It should be what is the appropriate repair, how long should it last, and what is the best use of taxpayers' money over the life of that repair. If a patch fails weeks or months later, the City pays again, another crew, another truck, more materials, more staff time. Residents pay too, through vehicle damage, inconvenience, and disruption.
Using the right technology for the right problem matters. Infrared asphalt repair is one example of a technology Kingston should be evaluating more closely. Where the underlying road structure is sound, infrared heaters can warm the existing asphalt around and beneath a damaged area, allowing it to be reworked and blended with new asphalt rather than simply dropped into a cold hole as a patch. Small portable infrared heaters can cost only a few thousand dollars, larger truck-mounted units run closer to $40,000, but most municipalities don't need to go that route to see the benefit. That modest investment should be weighed against the ongoing cost of repeatedly sending crews back to fix the same failed patch.
Infrared isn't the only answer, and potholes aren't Kingston's only road challenge. It's one example of the broader shift in thinking that's needed. From reactive repairs to proactive maintenance: filling a pothole today solves today's problem, but if it comes back next month, we've paid to solve the same problem twice. Kingston needs a maintenance approach that looks beyond today's repair to consider durability, total lifecycle cost, and the best use of public resources.
This isn't necessarily about spending more, it's about spending smarter. When a road needs real repair, we should repair it properly, the equivalent of sutures or a cast when that's what's required, rather than putting another Band-Aid over the same problem again and again. That's the shift I believe Kingston needs: an approach to road maintenance that is forward-thinking, responsible with public money, and focused on getting lasting value out of every repair dollar spent.