Gideon Spevak

The situation can certainly be tackled from many angles. The message that would resonate with most people is that simply throwing money at the problem won’t solve it, and I hope that all of my fellow candidates would agree. I think that the development of Mettawas Park and the weekly concerts held there are getting more people out by the waterfront, but certainly we must do more in order to make our waterfront somewhere that people want to bring their families to enjoy. The town has highlighted that development to our waterfront and marina is part of their economic development strategy, but I think we ought to form a committee similar to the Main St Development Committee established by Councillor DeYong which I served on, in order to formulate a plan for our waterfront taking feedback from the community which we can give to council as a recommendation. I’m open to any more specific suggestions as to what we should do to improve our waterfront but as Councillor Neufeld said, the bottom line is that we need to make smart investments into our waterfront.

Planning is absolutely the number one key to our success in achieving our goals as a municipality. I echo comments by Brandon Stanley and Kimberly DeYong for Kingsville Deputy Mayor that development is inevitable but instead of simply trying to halt progress or rubber stamp everything that makes it onto our hypothetical desk, we must find the right solutions for our residents and we must and can work with developers in order to achieve this.

Well before we even have the discussion about the best use for both of these properties, we have to decide as a municipality if we are going to purchase these properties. My answer is YES. Whatever your opinion is on what should go in these respective areas, the town must secure its ability to have a say and the only way to do that is to purchase the property. The KPS property would be a great opportunity for housing, I think we should look into building geared-to-income housing here as it has easy access to the downtown core and should not work against the housing prices in this area as they already stand. As for KDHS, I think the idea of a green space is interesting. However, my issue with this idea is that this would serve only as an attempt to halt development on Main Street, which we know will inevitably end in failure and will only hurt our residents. There is a great deal of land on this plot, and I think we would be wise to consider all of our options as far as how we can develop this area.