Your questions, answered
Short, straight answers on where I stand in Ward 2.
Municipal tax trajectory
Burlington property taxes compounded 26.62% over four budgets, against inflation of 15.56%. The City's own portion rose 42.56%. We over-rely on residential property owners and continuously stack service enhancements onto base budgets.
We must cap discretionary base-budget additions, perform line-item contract audits, expand our commercial tax base, and openly examine utility modernisation. My background in contract oversight lets me audit municipal procurement and identify waste. Full detail →
Waterfront & development
Four towers of 23 to 27 storeys are approved on the strip between Lakeshore and Old Lakeshore — roughly 720 units. Meanwhile the Province moved our Urban Growth Centre to the GO station lands in 2021.
Growth should be directed to the GO lands where infrastructure exists, and the downtown zoning finished with legally binding height and setback caps. Full detail →
Traffic and active transportation
Ward 2 has severe congestion on Lakeshore and Brant. Removing vehicular lanes in a car-dependent city with severe winters and a large senior population forces commuter traffic onto quiet residential streets.
Protect primary road capacity, shift cycling to safe off-road multi-use trails, install smart signal technology, and expand Handi-Van service. Full detail →
Safety
Safety in Ward 2 is mostly not about crime. It's about intersections, lighting, sightlines, sidewalk condition, and speed on residential streets that have become cut-through routes.
- Traffic impact assessment before approval, not after. No new development in Ward 2 approved without one.
- A Ward 2 walkability and lighting audit — including the routes seniors actually use to reach shops, transit and Joseph Brant, walked in person, in winter, at night. Conditions that are fine in June at noon are not fine in January at five o'clock.
- Take residential cut-through seriously. When arterial capacity is squeezed the traffic doesn't evaporate; it moves onto Elizabeth, Locust, Pine and James — streets with children on them.
Restorative safety means the presence of trust, not just the absence of danger. That includes residents feeling that reporting a problem produces a response.
Data centres
Data centres are arriving across southern Ontario quickly, and most municipalities are not ready for them. They are large, they consume substantial electricity and often water for cooling, they generate constant low-frequency noise, and they produce very few permanent jobs relative to their footprint.
I don't have a fixed position on whether Burlington should host one, and I'm not going to invent one for a campaign. I do have a clear position on the process:
Before any data centre application is considered in Burlington, we need zoning that specifically addresses this use — noise limits at the property line, water consumption disclosure, grid impact assessment, setback and screening requirements, and a decommissioning obligation so we aren't left with an empty shed in twenty years.
Right now our non-residential zoning is still Zoning By-law 2020, written before this industry existed at this scale. That is precisely the gap I keep talking about. A city without current zoning does not get to set the terms — it responds to an application on someone else's timetable. More on the zoning gap →
Get the rules written first. Then have the conversation.
Didn't answer your question?Send it to me →