Peterborough should take climate change seriously in the decisions it controls. That means protecting green space and tree canopy, reducing unnecessary sprawl, improving stormwater and flood protection, and designing infrastructure for more extreme weather. Failing to prepare now will create much larger environmental, housing and infrastructure costs later.
Peterborough needs more homes, investment and a stronger tax base, so I don't support slowing development for its own sake. Growth should still be matched with infrastructure, services, accessibility, and environmental standards. The goal should be well-planned growth, with more density where existing infrastructure can support it.
I don't think municipal workers are individually paid too much. Good wages and benefits should be something private-sector employers strive toward, not something we drag public workers away from. The better question is whether the City has the right staffing levels, management structure, and processes for the work being done. I want to benchmark those against comparable municipalities and improve productivity without treating workers' pay as the problem.
Keep core services public unless outsourcing can clearly prove better value. For permanent municipal services, in-house delivery provides greater accountability, institutional knowledge, and control over quality. Contractors have a role for specialized or temporary work, but outsourcing shouldn’t simply mean getting the lowest bid by suppressing wages or service standards.
Council should govern collectively. Peterborough is currently subject to Ontario’s strong-mayor regime, under which the mayor can veto certain council-approved bylaws, although council can override a veto with a two-thirds vote. My position is that these powers undermine representative council government and shouldn’t be used to overrule the democratic decision of council.
Peterborough should visibly welcome LGBTQ+ residents. Raising the Pride flag during Pride month is an appropriate municipal recognition of a community that is part of Peterborough. A clear flag policy can keep these recognitions consistent and transparent.
Continue land acknowledgements, but don't let acknowledgement substitute for action. Recognizing Indigenous peoples’ historic and continuing relationship with the land is appropriate. It should be accurate, respectful, and accompanied by substantive relationships and reconciliation work rather than becoming something council recites mechanically.
We should preserve history by default, but contextualize it honestly, and reserve removal or renaming for serious cases. A troubling history isn't necessarily improved by deleting the evidence of it. Interpretation, plaques, and education can sometimes confront that history more effectively. But preservation shouldn't become an excuse for continuing to honour someone whose commemoration is fundamentally indefensible.
Keeping taxes affordable matters, but cutting essential services just to advertise a lower tax rate is a false economy. I want the City to spend existing revenue much more efficiently, control unnecessary costs, and plan infrastructure properly. When a service is genuinely needed, underfunding it today can leave residents paying considerably more to fix the consequences tomorrow.
We need to fund broadly beneficial services broadly. User fees are effectively a flat charge and can consume a much larger share of a low-income resident's budget. Taxes are generally a fairer way of financing essential and broadly used municipal services. The larger priority should be making sure existing tax revenue is being spent efficiently before asking residents for more.
Housing should be used as housing. I support a vacant-home tax designed to encourage genuinely vacant residential properties back onto the rental or resale market, with sensible exemptions and annual reporting on administration costs, properties affected, and homes returned to use. Ontario permits municipalities to impose these taxes specifically as a housing-supply tool.
Peterborough needs more housing choices. I support missing-middle housing, apartments, and gentle infill in existing neighbourhoods where infrastructure can support them. Building more homes within the urban area can improve affordability while reducing sprawl, making better use of existing services and protecting the green space around our city.
Build inward before building outward. Peterborough can substantially expand housing through infill, missing-middle housing, and greater density without treating green space as vacant land waiting for development. Trees, wetlands, and green spaces are also infrastructure for cooling, stormwater, recreation, and climate resilience.
We can preserve our heritage without freezing the city in amber. Heritage protection should prevent unnecessary destruction of significant buildings, particularly when demolition or extensive renovation produces little public benefit. But adaptive reuse should be encouraged. Turning an older building into several homes while preserving its significant character is very different from simply tearing it down or ripping out perfectly good original materials.
Ability to pay shouldn't determine access to essential community services. Targeted subsidies for transit, recreation, and other important municipal programs can make the city more accessible. Those who are better able to contribute should carry a fair share, but every program should still demonstrate that the money is producing useful results. People need to be able to see that their contributions are actually helping their community, not just vanishing into the aether.
Water and sewer infrastructure has to be maintained before failures become more expensive. I would support necessary upgrades backed by asset-condition data and transparent lifecycle costs. Before raising rates, the City should look for efficiencies and available outside funding, and any unavoidable increases should be phased carefully to protect affordability.
We need to treat the causes of downtown disorder, not just its symptoms. Downtown needs enough police to respond to violence and genuine safety issues, but more officers won't solve poverty, homelessness, or addiction. I would shift more of the response toward housing, outreach, treatment and crisis services, with police focused on situations that actually require enforcement. The goal should be fewer crises requiring police intervention, not an ever-growing police presence.
Public safety isn't improved simply by assuming the police budget must grow every year. I would examine which calls and problems could be reduced more effectively through housing, outreach, addiction services, crisis response, and prevention, then shift funding where the evidence supports it. Council sets the Police Services Board's overall budget, so it should use that authority carefully and transparently.
Addiction requires a health-and-support response. Police remain appropriate for violence, trafficking, and immediate threats to public safety, but arresting someone for being addicted doesn't resolve the addiction. Treatment, harm reduction, outreach, supportive housing, and mental-health care should carry most of that work.
Peterborough should maintain enough safe emergency shelter capacity that nobody is forced to sleep outside simply because every appropriate bed is full. But shelters should be temporary, not the destination. The City should expand supportive and transitional housing, with mental-health and addiction supports, so fewer people need emergency shelter over time.
Public encampments shouldn't become permanent housing, but alternatives have to come first. Once genuinely accessible shelter or housing is available, the City can reasonably require public spaces to remain available for their intended use. Clearing tents while leaving people nowhere safer to go simply relocates the problem and should not be considered a solution.
The city must do what it can to protect tenants from bad-faith displacement. Peterborough should use the municipal powers available to discourage renovictions and preserve existing affordable rentals, while recognizing that the province controls most landlord-and-tenant law. Legitimate renovations should remain possible; using renovations as a pretext to remove tenants and reset rents is the behaviour we must be targeting.
Low-density development requires more roads, pipes and other infrastructure per household. Developers should pay a fair share of those growth-related costs rather than shifting them onto existing taxpayers. That also creates a better incentive for compact development, which uses existing infrastructure more efficiently.
Traffic calming should be used where speed data, street design and safety concerns show a real need, particularly around homes, schools, crossings, and pedestrian routes. I support targeted measures that make residential streets safer, while measuring the results rather than assuming the same intervention makes sense on every street.
Large trees provide public benefits even when they're privately owned. Strong tree protections are justified because canopy affects neighbouring properties, drainage, heat, air quality, and the wider urban environment. Rules should still include reasonable exceptions for dangerous trees, necessary maintenance, and situations where removal cannot reasonably be avoided.
Libraries should be funded like the essential community infrastructure that they are. In addition to their traditional roles as knowledge hubs and third-places for the community, Libraries now also provide internet access, public space, programming, information, and services used by people who may have nowhere else to go. If libraries are increasingly absorbing social-support pressures created elsewhere in the system, they need resources to do that safely while still performing their core library functions.
My first choice is to fund more social and supportive housing by reallocating lower-priority spending, using municipal land and securing provincial and federal partnerships. But if those measures aren't enough, I would still support additional public investment, including higher taxes if necessary. Stable housing can also reduce more expensive emergency responses elsewhere.
We need to spend more on transit, but not by pricing people off it. Peterborough's $3.50 adult fare is already above the TTC's $3.35 cash and $3.30 PRESTO/contactless fares. Better frequency, routes, and reliability can attract riders who currently have other options. The goal should be to grow ridership by making transit useful, not squeeze more from the people who already depend on it.
Road maintenance matters, but roads should not be funded at the expense of other core services. Streets, sidewalks, transit, drainage, accessibility, and underground infrastructure work as one connected system. I would prioritize spending based on condition, safety, usage, and lifecycle costs rather than automatically directing more of the budget toward roads.
I support modernizing the Memorial Centre rather than committing Peterborough to a new $170-million facility. Before taking on a project of that scale, I want a transparent comparison of renovation, operating costs, transit access, land use and the opportunity cost of public funding. The existing facility needs investment, but replacement shouldn't be treated as the automatic answer.