Lucan Biddulph all candidates meeting sheds light on local issues
By Dan Rolph
It was a full house at the Lucan Biddulph Community Memorial Centre on Thursday, Oct. 8, as residents gathered to hear from the candidates in the upcoming municipal election.
A group of community volunteers, led by Colin Whitehead, hosted an all candidates meeting that included a mixture of questions directed at each of the candidates, as well as a period of questions from the audience. Topics ranged from managing growth to future plans for the Granton fire station.
The meeting comes as the community prepares for the municipal election on Oct. 26 that is already set to see major shakeups in the council chambers.
After the announcement that Cathy Burghardt-Jesson wouldn’t seek another term as mayor, current deputy mayor Dave Manders announced his intention to run to become the next head of council. Also joining the race is former mayor Paul Hodgins, who has been serving as North Middlesex’s deputy mayor since the he was acclaimed in the 2022 election.
Two candidates are also seeking to become the next deputy mayor — current Ward 1 councillor Daniel Regan, and political newcomer Adam Sachs.
Meanwhile, Ward 1 is a two-way race between Ken Hoggart and Bryan Frank Malito, while Ward 3 has the most crowded slate of candidates with current councillor Alex Westman seeking re-election, while Jim Law and Nolan Goldie are also pursuing the position.
Ward 2 is the only ward where a councillor has been acclaimed, with Allan Cunningham set to represent the area after no other candidate put their name forward.
Lucan Biddulph residents will also find a slate of three candidates on the ballot for the Thames Dalley District School Board trustee position — Christian Sachs, Bev Noble and Bill Tichenoff. However, trustees have not been involved in the school board’s operations since April 2025, when the province took over and appointed a supervisor amidst growing budgetary deficits.
One topic that dominated the evening was transparency and communication between the municipality and residents, and candidates were often asked how they thought communication could be improved by the next council.
Sachs said he is someone who regularly watches council meetings online, but highlighted the practice of publishing point-form council highlights as some other lower-tier municipalities do as a way to improve communication.
“For Lucan, when we want to know what happens, you have to watch the YouTube video,” he said. “You have to go through it, and they’re lengthy.
“It is not easy to find the information. On the website there is an agenda. They do post it. It is publicly posted, but it’s not simple. We need simple. We need somebody who’s going to break it down, bullet points, easy to understand, easy to consume, easy for the community to make a decision that they like what their elected officials are doing.”
Regan pushed back against the assumption of there being a considerable issue with transparency and communication in Lucan Biddulph. He called on those attending the meeting to act as ambassadors in the community and asked them to push their neighbours to seek out more information through online resources and conversations with their representatives.
“It depends on who you talk to about whether or not there’s a transparency issue,” he said. “The information is there. Every bit of information that I’ve got tonight that I got for this meeting, I got from the website. I did that for a reason, because I knew transparency was going to be a question.
“When we talk about transparency for people, there are people in this community that know everything. They watch the videos and they ask questions. That’s what I’m asking you to do.”
Managing growth in Lucan Biddulph was also a hot topic during the meeting, with some questions pointing to a proposed five-storey apartment building on Richmond Street across from Lucan’s Tim Hortons as a point of contention. The building was first brought before council in 2025, and a back-and-forth between the developer, Farhi Holdings Corp., and the municipality has led to changes in the proposal
Though part of that upper level has been removed from the plans through those discussions, neighbouring residents have continued to lobby council to push for further changes.
Manders said he would fight to see that fifth story entirely removed from the proposed building, though he noted the fight may be one the municipality is destined to lose.
“He’s going to fight it,” said Manders. “We will hire a planner. We will hire a lawyer, and we’re going to spend $90,000 of taxpayer’s money. I don’t know if it’s defendable, but I’m going to fight for that to be four storeys or less.”
Under Lucan Biddulph’s official plan, apartment developments of the proposed building’s scale are limited to arterial roads and main intersections.
However, Hodgins said he would like to see that approach changed to stop further apartment development along Main Street.
“Apartments should be made in the back, further away from Main Street,” he said. “As people come in, I don’t want them to come into this town and see apartments right off the bat, although some are there already. I would make sure that there isn’t really anymore.”
One topic that drew plenty of attention during the meeting was the fate of the Granton fire hall.
Lucan Biddulph’s 2023 Fire Service Master Plan included an evaluation of possibly consolidating the service’s operations in Lucan and Granton into a single new station just north of Lucan. The move would be aimed at helping prepare for projected growth in Lucan, where the plan states most emergency incident responses already occur.
Though the plan states the impact on response times in both communities would be “minimal” it also notes there could be impacts on insurance costs to properties in the Granton area. There could also be challenges in such a move as the Granton station is partly owned by Perth South, which may not have another economically viable option for fire services in the area.
Law said he firmly believes the station should remain in Granton.
“Safety is everything,” he said. “I believe we should keep the firehall in Granton,” he said. “I would never vote it out, unless you could show me and prove to me that the people of the community we going to be just as safe without it. I don’t think you can.”
Goldie agreed that Granton should maintain its distinct fire station in the community.
“Obviously, it’s a large key player within not only our municipality, but also Perth South,” he said. “It should stay like that. We need extra key players around in order to help out. We’ve only been seeing fires start to get out of hand more and more.”
Westman noted that the Fire Service Master Plan that was prepared by a consultant listed the consolidation of the two fire stations as an option, but he stressed there hadn’t been discussions about closing the station.
“It would be reckless and ridiculous to even consider closing it,” he said. “There was never any talk of closing the Granton hall. There is some restructuring going on because we need to make them more efficient. The two departments cost a lot of money. We want to find ways to make them run more efficiently.”
With candidates offering different approaches regarding the next four years, Lucan Biddulph voters will have the final say when they cast their ballots on Oct. 26.
A video of the entire meeting can be watched on YouTube at youtu.be/-CSTt9H4Od0.
Comments