City councillor Mark Hunter is running for mayor of Stratford.
The owner of Hunter Steel and its in-house lawyer, Hunter says his experience and skills from his day job are transferable to mayoral duties.
When asked what’s top-of-mind for voters this election season, the rookie city councillor said it’s similar to the big issues in the 2022 election.
“Roads, housing, and getting work completed on the Grand Trunk Site, those are all still top of mind.”
Hunter says with strong leadership, council could “could’ve gotten more things done.”
Hunter wants to find ways to get important city business completed without raising taxes.
“I know we have a lot of young families who are re-negotiating mortgages now at higher rates than when they originally bought their houses, and we want to make sure taxation isn’t a burden on people.”
For housing, Hunter said he would convert the stand-alone, detached single houses on large lots into fourplexes.
“The way we would finance that, you might take six of those existing houses, take down two of them to replace with fourplexes, so where you had six units, you would now have eight, and you would sell the remaining four units to finance the construction.”
If elected, Hunter would continue with the existing approval of up to $15 million for the new Library and YMCA for the Grand Trunk Site.
He says that would get the community engaged, and make it a more attractive location for private development needed to build housing and other things on the site.
He said given how large the project is, it might be a 25-year-endeavour.
“You can’t take your foot of the gas, you have to keep driving forward because if you push deadlines out too far there’s a tendency to push the project out to the deadlines. We have to…get that site activated as quickly as we can…this will take some time to fully develop.”
Hunter said he would not use Strong Mayor Powers and instead rely exclusively on the majority opinion of council.
“This is important to me that we maintain democracy, that our residents get the representation they’re entitled to, they all pay taxes, they ought to have a voice in how that money is spent, and I think the Strong Mayor Powers erode that representation.”
When it comes to affordability, Hunter said he would ask staff to bring a budget that’s an increase of no more than three percent, but ideally lower than that.
More collaboration with municipalities in the county is critical, according to Hunter, who would have meetings with different mayors to figure out how they can help each other.
Hunter worked as a lawyer for a Toronto firm before working in Hunter Steel, where he currently works as President of the company and its in-house lawyer.
