THE CASUAL GUYS LETTER TO CANDIDATE 4
Dear Candidate S,
I’m a 10-year resident in Municipality’s Neighborhood area. I didn’t have much time to plan my family’s move to City and the market at the time was of a nature that didn’t permit me to explore many options, so I didn't do much comparison of Neighborhood to other City neighborhoods. I’d like to express to you my observations gleaned over the last 10 years as they relate to the priorities as listed on your website.
Community Safety
Your Community Safety platform interests me and I support it. While policing is an important part of public safety and security, it’s often overstated. I strongly suspect that services ancillary to policing are grossly underfunded. Mental health issues abound. Drug addiction is far too common. Both of these factors, among several others, give rise to crime. Funding needs to be allocated to build and enhance proven successful programs that can operate in tandem with a qualified police force.
Small Business
I’m not a businessman. However, as a consumer who would like to support small businesses in my community, I would suggest that better infrastructure is needed to facilitate access to small businesses in Municipality.
A key component to meaningful community development is walkability. Today, a resident of Neighborhood, an urban community, who doesn’t want to drive, must walk about 30 minutes to buy a loaf of bread, carton of milk, or fresh produce. Some residents must walk 20 minutes to get to the nearest bus route. While it’s great to be able to walk to the Local complex for recreation, the only commercial centre was added this year on Arterial Road near Crossroad Dr., still a 30-minute walk for most residents in the subdivision. And the meagre size of that commercial centre is far too small to accommodate Municipality south of the Small River.
If I need to get in my car to engage in any business, I’m far more likely to drive further in my pursuit of bargains. Or perhaps I would opt for home delivery via an online retailer. The key to local business success is to make it more convenient for locals to access those businesses.
Inclusion and Access
As a multi-generation of primarily French-Canadian ancestry, inclusion and access as addressed in your platform don’t impact me directly. However, having lived and worked in the Third World for two years among the poorest people on earth, I can appreciate the perspectives of race and poverty in society, and the importance of fostering an inclusive and accessible community for everyone. I look forward to seeing your work in this area.
My recent exposure to what I term “mental diversity” has increased my awareness of the importance atypical mindsets bring to culture and society as well.
Infrastructure
Having lived in several places in eastern Canada and abroad, I can attest that City’s community development is comparatively poor. Home construction is prioritized over infrastructure to support new communities. Secondary roads are expanded to accommodate more traffic many years after they’re needed. The Arterial Road realignment is a great example of this lack of foresight. Developer, for example, the developer who built most of Neighborhood and other neighboring sectors, should have been required to develop this secondary infrastructure in conjunction with building homes, parks, etc.
City designs its roads to an outdated North American standard that isn’t conducive to safe driving. Our streets are already wide and the only passive traffic control measures we employ are in the form of static street signs and traffic lights. Our comfortable roadways invite complacency, requiring costly solutions in the form of policing and technology to solve the problem we created in the first place.
Instead, roads can be constructed narrower than they are. At key intersections, curbs can narrow busy roads to force drivers to slow down. I live at a busy intersection. When I’ve complained about drivers’ disregard for traffic signals, a police vehicle parked in front of my home was ready to catch offenders. The increased police presence worked for a day or two, but bad driving behaviour persisted after that.
Prioritizing cars over people is wrong. The traditional, expensive solutions have failed and will continue to fail. Innovative, effective, frugal solutions already exist and should be explored for application in Community.
Affordable Housing
I’m glad that at least one candidate in Municipality considers affordable housing important enough an issue to campaign on.
Like other cities, City is victim to property costs that have increased much, much more steeply than inflation and wages. For my own children, owning a home is challenging at best and completely out of reach at worst. There is far too much speculation in the housing market. Vacancy tax should be implemented on all vacant properties and undeveloped land (other than land designated for agricultural purposes). Tax speculators and developers more and reduce the tax burden on the middle class, small property owners. A significant enough vacancy tax will drive the cost of housing and rent down as owners will be incentivized to stop their financial bleeding.
In conclusion, I applaud your sense of civic responsibility. I hope that the perspectives I’ve shared in this email letter resonate with you to some degree and that you’ll consider them in both your platform and, should you win the upcoming election, in your service to our community.
Kind regards,
The Casual Guy
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