Low Turnout at Chamber’s All Candidates Event

A Couple of Council Candidates Did Not Attend

Q&A Forum Well Organized and On Time

Article & Images by Sue Dickens

Campbellford - Mon., Oct. 3, 2022 - Is there an election?

Well with the election just 10 days away, not all the candidates participated in the chance to have their say at an event hosted by the Trent Hills Chamber of Commerce.

And of the 150 or so chairs set up for prospective voters, 2/3 were empty.

Those who did attend were given the opportunity for the first 45 minutes to meet the candidates who had set up tables with their election platform information, and ask them questions one-on-one.

That opportunity was missed by those candidates not there and included: Jonathan Leach of Ward 2, and Joshua Chalhoub of Ward 5.

People who attended had 45 minutes to meet the candidates one-on-one

School trustee candidates were there and were given the opportunity speak about themselves as well. Those not there included Kathleen Tanguay, English School Trustee, Kristine Dandavino and Serge Paul, both French Public School Trustees.

Each council candidate had time to put forward a brief account of themselves and their priorities before the Q&A forum started.

The approximately two-hour event that followed was filled with questions posed to mayoralty and deputy mayor candidates.

The questions were submitted beforehand at the request of the Trent Hills Chamber of Commerce which hosted the event. There were no questions from the floor.

from left, Susan Fedorka, Bob Crate, Mike Metcalf and Bill Reid

Deputy mayor candidates, Bill Reid and incumbent Mike Metcalf and mayoralty candidates, Susan Fedorka and incumbent Bob Crate took centre stage for the challenge.

Like clockwork each question was asked and answered.

Approximately 18 questions were posed with responses measured in minutes to get through the event in a reasonable amount of time.

The questions covered a myriad of topics submitted to the Chamber, from thoughts on attracting more doctors and healthcare professionals to the area, to ways to make the municipality more bike friendly, to pedestrian safety, to ways of improving non-motorized pathways to make this a “safe, eco friendly, walkable community”, to addressing how to revitalize rundown parts of the towns, to bringing taxes and water bills in line with other communities, to asking for a promise that taxes not be raised in the next couple of years (to recover from the pandemic times), to the duties of Lower Trent Conservation and if they duplicate those of the municipality, to amending the water/waste water mandatory hookup bylaw, to a question asking why have bylaws if they are not enforced, to the need for housing for seniors, the homeless, and the disabled, to plans to help small businesses thrive following the pandemic, to how to involve residents in the decision making process in Trent Hills, to actions to help heal the divide between communities, to ways to encourage a sense of well being and a sense of community in Trent Hills.

You had to be there to follow each of these queries and the answers by the candidates. That’s a lot of topics and each candidate tackled the questions put to them in the time allotted.

Picking questions and answers at random here is a sample of what was asked and answered:

As an example here is part of an answer to the question about getting more doctors here. Fedorka noted, “I have been involved with the nurse practitioners and I have been staying in touch and filling out questionnaires on behalf of our community to let the Nurse Practitioners Association know how desperately we need at least to start with, nurse practitioners …I will advocate. I will move our demand or request up the food chain and make sure that they (government) know we’re here and that we want to be recognized. I’m not afraid to push for what we need.”

In another example, answering the question about revitalization of the towns’ downtowns, Metcalf noted there are three organizations, the Campbellford BIA, the Hastings Revitalization Association and the Warkworth Business Association. He said, “Working in partnership and collaboration with those groups to get the information back and really understand what needs to be done is super important.” There was more to his answer of course, this is just a sampling of what he said.

Answering the question about taxes and water bills (being high), Crate responded, that by comparing the seven municipalities in Northumberland, “We are in sort of in the middle, we’re at number five of seven municipalities (for taxes)…we’re the fourth as far as the costs for water and sewer.” He added, “It’s a user pay system (here). So we don’t make money on it. We charge enough to cover the costs and to put some into reserves to repair as we go along… So it is what it is. We do not waste money. As far as our taxes go, we are as diligent as we can be as far as spending your money providing the services that people ask for.”

When asked what can be done to support getting more housing for seniors, the homeless and disabled, Reid responded, in part, “Critical housing for seniors is problematic. We need to scramble and find every penny we can from any source we can so that we can start building this housing and it’s just going to become more dire if we don’t act on it now.”

Trent Hills Now acknowledges this article cannot begin to cover all the questions and answers but the Trent Hills Chamber of Commerce says it will be posting a video of the event soon which everyone can watch.

Regarding the series of Ward candidate events hosted by the chamber, Wards 1, 2 and 3 have already held. There are two more to come. Here are the dates.
WARD 5: Wednesday, October 5, Hastings Civic Centre
WARD 4: Thursday, October 6, Warkworth Legion

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. to chat one-on-one with candidates
7:00 to 8:30 p.m. is the Ward Candidate Question & Answer Forum

People met candidates prior to the Q&A forum