Mississauga incumbent mayor promises to fix police funding, cut red tape for small businesses

Election day is quickly approaching, and one of the more buzzier races is the race for Mississauga mayor. So we're sitting down with the top four candidates to get an understanding of their platforms and how their campaigns are going so far. What would you say is the one accomplishment that you are most proud of when it comes to your tenure as mayor? Well, it was only two years, but our most fabulous accomplishment is going from about 1,000 units being built before I was elected a year to 18,000 in process right now. we really shook up the housing world and the province actually picked up some of the ideas that we did for example not paying development charges until occupancy it saves the builders from going to the bank borrowing millions of dollars and paying interest on it which gets added to the property so we have really done a good job we've also really picked up our purpose-built rental because for two and three bedroom residents or units we don't charge any development charges. So the rentals, a lot of the guys that were building condos have switched over to rentals, which are family sized. So very, very proud of that. And it was in cooperation with the developers. We did it together. How will you make Mississauga a more affordable place for residents to live? Well, we've already done it. We've done it by convincing the province to take maintenance of regional roads out of the hands of the region and put it down in our own three municipalities we save 30 million dollars a year right away it snaps in part way through next year so you won't see the full benefits till 2028 the second thing we brought down was waste collection which we were subsidizing 18 million a year so that 48 million will be partially on the tax base next year as a reduction and in 2028 it'll be a full reduction third thing is negotiating with the premier to fix our police services board payments those are really heavy we subsidize Brampton this year, $106 million. That's almost 5% on your taxes. So he's agreed to discuss it in November and he's agreed to do something about it. So that's how you lower taxes. You have to find concrete ways to do it. You can't just say, I'm going to freeze taxes because the cost of living goes up every year. You can't freeze taxes, but I've worked really hard to have things you can measure that are going to make a difference. Will you raise property taxes? And if so, by how much or how little? Well, if I get the deal out of the premier that I've asked for, the taxes next year should level right off to just the cost of living. And once the garbage pick up and the roads click in for a full year, you'll see taxes go down quite a bit. So everything's in place. If I just continue along with what I'm doing, we should get to really reasonable taxes. low like our city this year is 1.6 percent increase I think people would handle that quite well city spending is coming up a lot amongst your opponents for mayor and do you think Mississauga has a spending problem no because we asked them this year because the economy was in the dumps and gas prices were going up and everybody was having a real struggle we asked every department to cut two percent from their budgets and they did it so you can't do it forever like they're putting off some projects that probably could be put off but not forever. So we'll be watching that closely and we're not going to be sort of dumping it all back next year because we're getting the extra money back. I think our staff is very responsible. One of the things that we've been hearing a lot over the last couple weeks, it started at the Mississauga Board of Trade debate and as well as a listening session we did last week with members of the community, really has to do with small businesses and there's this whole thought right now from small businesses that Mississauga is the toughest city to do business in. How will you make it easier for businesses to thrive in Mississauga? First of all, I'm surprised to hear that. We have a big economic development subdivision in our staff. We have roundtables we've done with small and medium-sized businesses. We have a partnership with Oxford Properties that they have a rental section that people starting businesses can go in and use as though they're their own offices. We subsidize some of the small businesses, women's startups, young people's startups, entrepreneurs. But if they're finding the practicality of getting their license and getting a business, all the paperwork, that I can fix, and I would fix it. It's the same thing we did with housing. When the applications went in, sometimes they'd go back and forth for six or seven months. We've now told everybody, our staff and the developers, that you only get two submissions. On the third one, everybody goes into a room with red pens, and they sit opposite each other, and they fix it. And the interesting thing is the threat of that has never materialized. Nobody has gone beyond two submissions. So if it's the same problem with small business, I'll take that one on right away. One of the questions out of our debate that created a lot of buzz was the question around Ridgeway Plaza, the community that exists with Ridgeway Plaza. We went to a documentary premiere last week that spoke about the community that exists there. And I'm wondering, Carolyn, is there any sort of thought being put towards potentially creating more Ridgeway Plazas in the future in Mississauga? That's a scary thought for some of the councillors, but I don't see why we wouldn't, as long as we start with a plan at the beginning that doesn't put all these roadblocks in the way. I've been to the Middle East five times, and in the evenings, that's when everybody comes out and they're sitting around, they're drinking coffee and they're chattering. That's the sort of atmosphere it is, and it's a good atmosphere to cultivate. And we have a big Middle Eastern population in Mississauga, and they also attract people in from Chicago. Apparently the advertisement for Ridgeway is in the airports in Chicago. So I think we should take advantage of it. In your campaign literature, you say you have gotten a commitment for all-day, two-way-go service on the Milton line. What are the details of that commitment? Is it similar to what the province announced two years ago, or have you had other conversations with the government? Their budget this year included the studies that are required. because if you do all-day two-way go, you're either going to have to put lay-bys so the trains can pass because it's a freight line, or you're going to decide to put a whole second line in beside it. And I think that study is going to cost the province some money, and they've put money in their budget for that. And have you spoken to the province during your time as mayor regarding any sort of updates towards some of these actions? Well, we've bugged them a lot. Anytime I meet Mr. Ford, I have a list of things I would like him to do, and that's a big one. because when you want to go downtown from Mississauga, you wouldn't want to use a subway system. First of all, it'll take a million years to build, but secondly, everybody likes the GO train. It's got a few stops. You can get down north-south, get down to the GO train and go, but on the west side, those people have difficulty getting on the GO trains. So until it goes through to Milton, it's not going to be as efficient a system as we would like. You mentioned wanting to fix the funding formula when it comes to Peel Regional Police. How do you plan to make Mississauga safer while also balancing out the current police funding formula? Well, first of all, the new chief has hired quite a few, I think about 450 new officers. They're all in process of working out how to use all those people, I'm sure. And when you talk to crowds, you can say to them, you know, car theft and break-ins have gone down 10%, but they don't feel that. They can always tell you someone's had a break-in on their street or someone has had a car stolen. So what we really need to do is get Nish's team to start putting more cruisers out, marked police cars, so people can see them in the plazas, they can see them in the neighbourhoods, they can see them where the problems are. And some residents are asking if we could put in more cameras, and I have to talk about that as far as being able to do it legally, because we aren't a country that likes to spy on people, and lots of people don't like them in their neighbourhoods. But if you've got a high crime area, maybe that's the solution. But I can't speak to it because I haven't discussed it with the police yet. Do you feel like the police budget where it's currently at is enough to fund a lot of those things that you just mentioned? Well, it's gone from half a billion dollars when we hired Nish to a full billion at the end of next year. So the police budget in six years has completely doubled. And the police officers that have been hired, I think, were needed. because the population of Mississauga between, I would say, the 10 years before we hired him, went up 130,000 people, and they were only hiring 30 cops a year. So it wasn't keeping up. So he had to do what he did. And I've never objected to the police, the way they operate. I've just objected to the 62-38 split.