Collaboration, teamwork at the heart of Burbach’s bid for mayor
CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A few months into campaigning to be next mayor of Stratford, Jo-Dee Burbach says she is impressed with the positive energy and good response she has seen door to door and across Festival City streets. The conversations she has been having and the issues voters have mirror her own priorities this election.
“The conversation during the campaign so far has been around affordability,” Burbach told the Times. “So housing, child care, transit, especially transit in and out of the city, definitely infrastructure like roads – that's a top of mind for a lot of people – and then how we best serve our unhoused population …
“… Collaboration and teamwork is extremely important, and there are many ways to collaborate,” Burbach continued. “The first and really important one is within council, so getting to know council members and developing a team spirit and working as a team is really important to me. And I think then once we work together to set our priorities right at the beginning of the term, to move forward quickly. One of the other things that I think is really important for a mayor to do is to be able to communicate well with the public, and I think that's one skill that I can really bring to the office – is to make sure that people understand what's going on, understand how to engage with the city, how to join conversations and give their opinions and understand the reason why we're doing some of the things that we do.”
Burbach has been serving as a City of Stratford councillor since 2018, originally getting into municipal politics after trying to navigate that world as a private citizen when she was attempting to create safer routes around her children’s school (something she achieved after successfully delegating to the council of the day). Since then she has served on all five council committees and has led a number of initiatives within the city – most recently pushing for Stratford to develop an AI data centre policy.
On creating a better communication ecosystem within the city, Burbach wants to bolster the city’s communications team with a “complete” plan from the mayor’s office.
Burbach would also aim to keep a modest and more consistent budget year to year, if elected.
“In the past, we've had an infrastructure deficit and some of the tax raises that we've seen this term have been a bit uneven because we are making up for that deficit,” Burbach explained. “So we've done some correcting along the way, and moving forward, I would say we should be able to keep to increases that are the cost of living … between two to three per cent – we should be able to do better forward planning to make sure that we don't have those large tax increases.”
Ultimately, Burbach believes Stratford residents should cast their mayoral votes for her in this election as a vote for her is one for consistency and efficacy.
“I'm an experienced member of city council for the last eight years,” Burbach petitioned. “I've provided effective leadership. I've brought forward my ideas and I've championed them, championed them to try to convince my colleagues that we should move forward on some projects, and I've had some good wins. I'm also very engaged with the community. Got good relationships with many community groups. I'm engaged with other levels of government. I've built relationships with them as well. So, I think for many of the challenges that we face, again, we need to work together as a team, not only on council but as an entire city. We need to get rid of some of the siloing that we are seeing currently, and work together more cohesively to achieve our goals.”
For more information on Burbach and her campaign, visit her website at www.jodeeburbach.com.
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