The Peterborough Examiner e-edition

Candidates offer visions for housing

Leal proposes agency to speed up development applications

JOELLE KOVACH EXAMINER REPORTER

There was a debate on housing and development for mayoral candidates on Thursday evening at the Knights of Columbus hall in Peterborough.

Peterborough & the Kawarthas Home Builders Association and Peterborough and the Kawarthas Association of Realtors organized it. The hour-long debate was recorded and posted on YouTube.

Organizers said all five candidates were invited to participate in the debate, but candidate Brian Lumsden, a former real estate broker, did not take part in the panel.

There will be further debates to come, prior to the municipal election Oct. 24 — including one on YourTV at 7 p.m. on Oct. 12. The Electric City Culture Council is hosting a debate on arts issues on Oct. 11 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Nexicom Studio at Showplace Peterborough with all five mayoral candidates and at least 15 councillor candidates committed to attend.

Here are some highlights from the Home Builders/Realtors debate on Thursday night:

How would you ensure Peterborough makes the most of underutilized lands, both commercial and residential?

Jeff Leal (former MPP, former city councillor)

“I propose to establish what we’d call Service Peterborough. No one has a monopoly on good ideas, so I looked right across this great land — and many other communities have developed this Service Peterborough concept, where we bring together the

planners, the engineers and people in property standards so we could move applications forward in a very expeditious manner to get shovels in the ground as quickly as possible.”

Coun. Stephen Wright (current Northcrest Ward councillor)

“Look at opportunities to build up. Whether it’s apartments — some seniors live their best life by renting. Also there’s the need to build up our condos, so city can increase its revenue stream to cover the almost $5 billion in infrastructure deficit.”

Victor Kreuz (former teacher)

“I would like to sue GE to clean up their toxic footprint in Peterborough — expropriate that land. Eject BWXT — which nobody wants — and use that land as a new stadium for the home of the Petes and for the Lakers as well… That is definitely one of the most underutilized lands in Peterborough, and it’s an ugly, cancer-causing eyesore.”

Coun. Henry Clarke (current Monaghan Ward councillor)

“When we’re talking about underutilized lands, the heart of that, really, is intensification. And there are opportunities in the community.”

“Think about Charlotte Street, or the corner of Hunter and Water. Those are places I would be prepared to have a sit-down with a developer and offer city incentives to build. That could put more eyes on the street, more people in the downtown, more people taking part in our shops, our restaurants and our commercial establishments.”

“The downtown is our commercial engine of our city…. So seeing that we do the right things there is so important.”

How would you fix downtown’s problems and social ills? Clarke

Go after the drug “pushers.” “We need to get rid of that poison that is destroying so many of our people — we can make a difference there.”

Kreuz “My idea is to declare Peterborough’s ambition to be a centre of excellence for the treatment of addiction and poverty and poor mental health — research and treatment. Use Fleming College and Trent University as much as possible. House those people as much as possible.”

Wright “You never cluster services for the marginalized or impoverished community. The clustering of methadone clinics in our downtown has created a scenario that we won’t see removed from the downtown until we start to decluster the methadone clinics in our downtown.”

“I suggest it’s time we remove the ward system. Every single counsellor in my four years on council, I’ve heard, ‘I cannot support that because it’s not in my ward.’…. You need to take a corporate view of the city.”

Leal “You have to have people living downtown, you have to have people working downtown, you have to have people shopping downtown and you have to have people visiting entertainment centres downtown.”

He also said Peterborough Police needs funding to hire 50 more officers in the city over the next five years.

“We need those officers, particularly those that are trained in intelligence. When you have officers trained in intelligence, you start to track down drug dealers and stop the flow of drugs coming into our community.”

Peterborough also needs a new major sport and entertainment centre, Leal said, mentioning cities such as St. Catharines and Guelph where such centres were built downtown.

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2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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