Council candidates: Sarah Merkel

Introduce yourself to readers. Who are you?

Hi! I’m Sarah Merkel and yes, I’m related to all of the Merkels in town! I grew up on a farm just outside St. Pauls, attended school and played sports in Stratford growing up. After university, Justin Ahrens (husband) and I returned to Stratford to put down roots and start a family (four kids ages 10 and under)! I have a Master’s in Public Health and love my job at Huron Perth Public Health. I’ve spent years volunteering, coaching and giving back. I love Stratford deeply, including our library, parks, theatre, businesses and, most importantly, our people.

What are the core issues you are focused on this election?

1) Families, Seniors and Equity-Deserving Populations: Enhancing our city where people of every age, background and circumstance can thrive/belong.

2) Grand Trunk: Creating a vibrant, accessible community hub that brings community together.

3) Housing, Homelessness and Affordability: Working toward everyone having a safe, stable and affordable place to call home.

4) Healthy Communities and Community Design: Designing neighbourhoods/public spaces people to live, learn, work, play, shop and age.

5) Climate and Sustainability: Taking practical action to protect our environment and build a sustainable future.

6) Community Engagement: Making meaningful community engagement a foundation of how decisions are made.

Next year’s budget, like last year’s, will be presented and guided by the mayor. As a councillor, what will you do to keep the tax levy low?

A new term of council means starting fresh. As a council, we need to ask: Are we doing this because we’ve always done it this way? Is there a more efficient way? Are we fully utilizing our staff’s time and strengths? Could our service levels be updated? What are our needs versus our wants? We need to look for efficiencies across all departments and services while maintaining the services residents rely on. Finally, we need to attract more industry and employment to our existing industrial lands, growing our tax base so the burden doesn’t continue to fall primarily on residents.

Housing and homelessness in Stratford continues to be a challenge. What, in your opinion, is the strategy the city should be taking in building more homes and/or improving affordability?

We need to build more affordable and social housing; locally we can do more through infill, gentle density and complete communities.

We need to get creative about the housing we already have. We have seniors who are living in homes with more bedrooms than they need, while other people are struggling to find a place to live. Are there ways to safely connect those people through home-sharing?

For those experiencing homelessness, the city should continue partnering with local organizations and invest in a housing first approach for more supportive housing, while meaningfully including people with lived and living experience.

Are you in favour of the current council’s direction on the GTR? If not, what strategy would you be in favour of?

I support most of the current direction and want to see the Grand Trunk project move forward. I know the project is contentious, but Stratford has been planning for this for years. We have a 2018 Master Plan, two years of work by the ad-hoc committee and, increasingly, community partners interested in moving it forward. We have the ingredients. Let’s make the cake!

I believe we need to fully understand the costs, opportunities and implications of each option presented to date, and understand the full implications of removing the structure completely (which isn’t an option that’s been included).