I will apply my experience listening to Willowdalers and solving problems as the Executive Director of a local charity towards finding sustainable solutions to our biggest challenges - housing affordability, homelessness, crime, and community infrastructure. But my biggest priority will be to change how our government leaders communicate with the people of Willowdale to ensure everyone's voices can be heard. Building a strong team and infrastructure to support this goal will be key. We cannot solve problems unless we work together.

Whenever we advocate for building more housing, we must also do the same for building infrastructure. The two should be developed hand in hand. In addition we should do the following: 1. Pilot gentle density in single home dwellings and determine impact on infrastructure. 2. Build the missing middle along arterial roads like Finch, Sheppard and Steeles which will result in more walkable neighbourhoods. 3. We must expand inclusionary zoning to include subsidized and supportive housing to create integrated mixed communities.

To mitigate the impact on climate change we must keep advocating for better transit service and building more subway lines. We must also encourage active transportation. This cannot simply be focused on building bike lanes but programs and initiatives that allow people to experience the benefits of active transportation - for example, OpenStreetsTO which I would like to run in Willowdale once a year. Lastly, we will start a Willowdale Climate Action Roundtable to create community-based actions that can be easily implemented by our community.

To address safety we need to: 1. Hold regular community safety townhalls including an urgent discussion on the impact of the shelter at 5800 Yonge Street. 2. Advocate to hire more traffic wardens, advocate for increased police presence and mental health crisis workers. 2. Advocate for better supports for mental health and addiction creating differentiated pathways and supports for those experiencing homelessness. 3. Build smaller scale supportive housing distributed throughout the city to help those who are homeless.

We need to create a budget that reflects all the complex needs of our growing city and determine how we will pay for that budget. We also need to maximize efficiency of city operations to ensure money is not being wasted like the over-expenditure of $15 million on downtown hotel shelters. Once we have determined our actual financial needs we can then engage community members to determine what is the best way to pay for what is needed, be it through taxes or other revenue tools.

We are at least 50 years behind in transit development. We need to advocate with our provincial and federal government for funding to make Toronto the accessible world class city that it should be. We should bring project managers and engineers from countries like Japan and Korea to share their knowledge of building transit expediently to learn from their processes and technology. We must invest in programs that foster active transportation across all seasons. Building bike lanes is one piece of the puzzle, shifting behaviour is also key.

Council needs to establish an evidence based infrastructure plan to demonstrate which neighbourhoods immediately have capacity to add new homes, and which ones need additional transportation capacity, parks and community services per capita to make growth work. Council then needs to invest in affordable housing programs, add permissions for multiplex housing in neighbourhoods and advocating for additional support from provincial and federal governments.

The City needs to continue to create safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists promoting more active transportation choices. It must preserve and expand transit services. Electric vehicle charging stations should be added to Green P infrastructure. Funding for home energy efficiency retrofits should be encouraged. Tree protection strategies and new planting strategies should also be augmented.

The City should be growing its network of sidewalks on streets that don't have them. Especially in proximity to parks and schools. More signalized crossing locations should be added to busy streets. Cycling infrastructure, both bike lanes and cycle share stations, should be added. Automated speed enforcement cameras should be expanded both in number and locations where they are permitted. Advocacy should be done with the province to expand the use of automated enforcement (ie. stop sign enforcement)

With high inflation rates, it will be difficult to go above inflationary increases to property taxes, but some services (ie. TTC) are a bigger drain on the City budget than pre-covid. Council should examine all possible revenue tools to protect existing services and look for opportunities to enhance services where user fees (or fines) are an option. Council must also advocate for more financial autonomy and support with both the provincial and federal governments, especially for delivering regional services like transit.

The City should explore alternatives to uniformed officers. Examples include first responders specifically trained for crisis support, more automation in traffic enforcement, or the use of traffic wardens. This would allow police to focus on addressing criminal activity that they are uniquely equipped to handle. There is also much work to be done building trust between communities and City police. Neighbourhoods would benefit from having specific officers uniquely assigned to them to build ongoing relationships.

I want to ensure that high growth areas are being adequately served with matching services and infrastructure. I would want to establish per capita service levels in all City neighbourhoods and ensure areas of growth are keeping up. The City may need to do more to direct Development Charge revenue back to its growth centres. Establishing partnerships with developers would also help to create new city services including community centres, child care, libraries and long term care spaces right into the podium of new buildings.