Bluewater mayoral hopefuls lay out priorities ahead of municipal election

By Dan Rolph

How Bluewater should manage growth, housing pressures and rising costs took centre stage as the municipality’s two mayoral candidates joined its acclaimed future deputy mayor for a public forum on the next council term.

The Huron County Chamber of Commerce held a “Candidate Conversations” evening at the Zurich Community Centre on Sept. 28, which included an hour-long question-and-answer period with the candidates who are looking to sit on Huron County council as Bluewater’s representatives. The evening also offered a meet-and-greet opportunity with many of the candidates seeking a position on the next Bluewater council.

During the meeting, Tyler Hessel and Paul Klopp — Bluewater’s two mayoral candidates — were on the stage alongside Bill Whetstone, who has been acclaimed as the next deputy mayor.

All three of the candidates bring with them a background of local political experience. Klopp has most recently served two terms as mayor in the community of about 7,500 residents, while Hessel was Bluewater’s mayor from 2014 to 2018 before coming back to serve as the Hay West councillor during this last council term.

Meanwhile, Whetstone has represented Bayfield as that community’s councillor since he was first elected in 2014. His acclimation as deputy mayor marks the third time in a row he has been unopposed seeking a position in the council chamber.

The question-and-answer section of the event covered a wide range of topics, including managing growth, attracting workers, economic development, housing and more.

Whetstone, who was first to speak during the evening, said one of his main objectives for the next term of council is to develop more financial long-term planning, which he suggested should involve a budget committee that plans for the next 10 years.

Whetstone said he would also be interested in minimizing service duplication within Bluewater.

“What I’d like to do is put together an efficiency optimization program, which does look at duplications of services, where we can share services. It has to be a focused budget committee to be able to do that in order to be able to make it happen.”

Hessel, who spoke after Whetstone, said he is approaching his bid to serve another term as mayor with a focus on viewing Bluewater as a whole. He said he hopes to focus on Bluewater’s model for delivering services if he’s elected as the community’s next mayor.

“We have to be looking at that often and regularly,” he said. “Our service delivery model is the only thing we do for Bluewater taxpayers. We don’t build you anything, we don’t grow you anything, we don’t produce anything. But what we do do is provide you service. The key is making sure we’re providing the right service all the time and making sure we’re looking at that service that we’re providing on a regular basis to make sure we’re doing it adequately.”

Klopp said council under his leadership has already been tackling the budgeting process in a way that scrutinizes each line item.

“We didn’t call it zero-based funding, but I said we’re going to do the budget line by line,” said Klopp. “This budget, we came to conclusions that we had to turn things around, and we cut $3 million worth of operating. I can tell you that isn’t done by pounding the table and just getting your way. It’s done by constantly thinking and talking to people behind the scenes calmly. That’s what I bring to the table.”

After their opening remarks, housing was the first topic on the agenda.

Hessel said housing is “extremely important” to him. He said Bluewater can be limited in tackling housing issues in comparison to Huron County, and he spoke against the idea of purchasing land to help with the area’s housing shortages. He pointed to encouraging the building of secondary housing units, such as “granny flats,” as an approach that could help the region’s housing woes.

“That’s what I want to promote because I know that’s viable,” he said. “I’m going to keep it simple and say let’s help put together ideas about or push and help get that secondary housing on properties if it’s needed, like granny flats and housing for our youth.”

Klopp said there are challenges in going through the planning process, which he described as “costly” and “complicated,” and he advocated for downloading Huron County’s planning department to lower-tier municipalities. He argued those municipalities could offer the same planning services at a lower cost than the county.

“The argument clearly is if we get that downloaded that it’s actually more local, I think we can save money,” he said. “One of the things we’re constantly doing is when someone does have a project, I continuously, through our councillors, we take the bull by the horns and we push our planning department to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible.”

Whetstone said his approach to housing is focused on planning for the future. He pointed to the development of the Bayfield Secondary Plan as a strategy that should be extended beyond Bayfield.

“We need to do a plan for the rest of the municipality,” he said. “Chances are at some point in time there’s going to be growth. It can’t all be in Bayfield … We have to be ready with a plan so when developers do come, we can say ‘hey we’ve got a plan here. This is what the plan is. The residents have bought into the plan. They were part of the process.’”

On the topic of taxes, each of the three candidates emphasized the importance of balancing the wants and needs of the community while ensuring that residents see value in the taxes they pay.

“It’s just no different in your own household,” said Klopp. “How do you decide how much money you’re going to spend on anything? You treat it as if it’s your own money and you work at it remembering that there are people that make very little income in this community.

“Obviously, nobody likes to pay taxes, but you have to try to have empathy and say, ‘would I spend this money?’”

Whetstone said when judging the value residents are getting from their taxes, it’s important to analyze the quality of life for residents, as well as what they are asking from council.

“If everybody has happy quality of life, they’re happy paying what they’re paying,” he said “Is anybody ever going to be happy paying the full amount? No, but they have to look back to what the value is. So, if you’re comfortable and able to stay here and enjoy living here, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what councils should be looking at. That’s what we need to be focused on and making sure it’s not about taking services away.

Hessel noted that he believes it should be developers paying for development in Bluewater, and that the burden of growth shouldn’t fall on current residents.

“We want to keep it that developers pay for development,” he said. “It should not be the taxpayers paying for development. It should be the developers paying for development. But right now, the offset is on you.”

With Huron County having one of the lowest unemployment rates in Ontario, the topic of attracting more workers to Bluewater was touched on by the candidates.

Klopp said Bluewater’s financial support for Huron Shores Area Transit has been one successful strategy for attracting and maintain a workforce in the community. The local transit system, which is operated by Lambton Shores, offers bus routes that connect Bluewater’s communities to surrounding communities as well as urban centres like London and Sarnia.

“That allows a lot of our businesses, especially along the lake, to get students to come in,” he said. “There’s no one little, one major thing that’s going to fix this. But that’s a start.”

Whetstone’s attention turned toward two major hurdles in Bluewater that he said hinder attracting workers — a high cost of living and lower than average wages. Though he said options for council to address those issues are limited, he noted the importance of advocacy from municipal leaders.

“How are we ever going to expect we’re going to be able to fill those roles if we can’t actually have something here for people,” he said. “This goes back to affordable housing, and it comes back to a plan. How do we do something like that, that’s got to be able to keep people here? They want to be able to stay here afterwards. We’ve got to look at how we actually change that.”

Hessel echoed Whetstone’s comments about the importance of planning, and he advocated for paying living wages to employees. He noted that most employees at his personal business currently need to drive to work from places like Central Huron and Huron East due to a lack of housing.

“If we’re going to plan for bringing people into our community … we need to make sure that there’s an opportunity for them to find housing, within driving distance even,” he said. “I can tell you as a person that has 35 staff right now, I think I have two in Bayfield.

“They’re in anywhere they can find homes, and that is a very difficult thing.”

In his closing statement to the crowd, Hessel said he believes it’s time for new leadership in Bluewater.

“I do believe it’s time for a change,” he said. “I do think it’s time for us to be held accountable at the table, us first, and I can tell you I’ve been held accountable. I didn’t win an election. I was held accountable. I learned from that.”

Hessel emphasized the importance of viewing Bluewater as a whole community and pointed to his history of playing hockey on teams based in many of the communities that are now a part of Bluewater.

“We sit in silos,” he said. “I can tell you I’ve never sat in silos … I played for all of you, and I want to continue playing for all of you. And now, I want to do it as your mayor again.”

Klopp said he is running for another term to be the next head of council because he wants to continue cutting red tape in government, particularly at the county level.

“I want to continue to, as I talked about at the county level, to find and work on ways to reduce costs up there, to share down at the lower tier,” he said.

As well, Klopp said he is committed to keeping Bluewater’s assets and improving them.

“That’s what we’ve been working towards,” he said. “At the same time, when someone does phone about what seems to be a little issue, it’s important to them. It doesn’t matter when they call me. We’ll work on that.

Whetstone reiterated his commitment to planning for the future in his closing remarks.

“I have an action plan,” he said. “That’s why I’m running for deputy mayor. That’s why I put my name in.

“It’s about getting those actions in place and getting them in place quickly and actually implementing them so people that raised their kids here, that lived here all their life or that moved here can actually stay here and retire because things are getting too expensive. We have to act now in order to do that.”