Core priorities
Five things City Hall will feel every week.
As mayor, David’s work starts here. Not a hundred promises. Tourism. Roads. Business and conservation. Waste. The budget.
01
Tourism
Tourism is not a side file at City Hall. It shapes how residents live, how businesses survive, and why people keep coming back to these lakes.
Kawartha Lakes is a tourism economy living alongside a year-round community. Cottagers, boaters, anglers, and weekend visitors are not separate from daily life here — they are part of it. When tourism is healthy, Main Streets stay open, service jobs hold, and the lakes stay the reason families return.
As mayor I will look at major municipal decisions through the lens of tourism: roads that get visitors in and residents home, waterfronts that are cared for, events that fill our towns, and conservation that protects the product we are selling — clean water and a place worth travelling to.
That lens is not about putting visitors ahead of the people who live here. It is about recognizing that residents, businesses, and guests succeed together when City Hall treats tourism as infrastructure, not an afterthought.
- Treat tourism impact as a standing question on major reports to Council
- Work with Destination Kawarthas, chambers, and BIAs as partners, not as an audience
- Protect the visitor experience on the lakes without pricing out the people who live here
02
Roads, Traffic & Infrastructure
Roads, traffic, and infrastructure decide whether you get to work, whether a business can grow, and whether this city is a place people will invest in.
From gravel back roads to Lindsay’s busiest intersections, RTI — roads, traffic, and infrastructure — is the file residents feel every single day. Potholes, spring breakup, snow clearing, and congestion are not technical footnotes. They are quality of life.
Kawartha Lakes cannot fix this file by talking only to itself. Municipal crews need a clear plan and the budget to match it. Provincial highways, connecting links, and funding programs need a mayor who will show up at Queen’s Park and make the case.
Investment follows pavement. If the roads are unreliable, businesses stall, school buses crawl, and emergency response suffers. Leading on RTI is how we unlock growth and opportunity for every community in this city — urban and rural.
- Put road condition and winter response at the top of the capital conversation
- Advocate provincially for the pieces Kawartha Lakes cannot fund alone
- Measure success the way residents do: is my road better this year than last?
03
Business & Catch-and-Release
A Kawartha catch-and-release strategy for visitors and residents — conservation that protects the fishery — paired with real support for every community’s businesses.
The lakes are the brand. If we exhaust the fishery, we exhaust the reason people come, spend, and stay. A Kawartha catch-and-release strategy is a conservation promise to tourists and residents alike: take a photo, take a memory, put the fish back, keep the resource.
That is not anti-business. It is the condition for a durable visitor economy. Alongside it, City Hall has to be easier to deal with for the people who actually run shops, farms, trades, and services here.
I will back chambers of commerce and business improvement associations in every Kawartha Lakes community — not just the largest downtown. Industry and core services need a mayor who treats small business as the tax base, not as a special interest.
- Champion a city-wide catch-and-release conservation message for the lakes
- Show up for chambers, BIAs, and main-street businesses in every community
- Cut friction in planning and licensing so local operators can get on with work
04
Garbage, Collection & Recycling
Collection and sorting are an integral part of municipal tax responsibilities. Efficient 3Rs — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle — can manage the whole waste stream if City Hall runs them like they matter.
Garbage is not glamorous. It is one of the few things every household judges the city by, every week. Collection, sorting, organics, and the landfill are a contract with the taxpayer: you pay, the mess gets handled.
Residents have already been asked to change how they sort. Bag limits, green bins, and depot rules only work if the service on the other side is reliable, clearly explained, and fair between urban routes and rural roads.
Efficient 3Rs strategies can manage all elements of municipal garbage collection and disposal — if we treat them as operations, not slogans. It’s time to clean up this current mess.
- Hold waste collection to a service standard residents can actually see
- Make 3Rs rules clearer, and apply them consistently across communities
- Keep landfill and organics costs honest in the budget, not buried in fine print
05
Budget & Taxes
Moderation is key. Balance is important. Hold the budget line with a steady hand, and make Kawartha Lakes more affordable for the people who live here.
A city this size cannot tax its way out of every problem, and it cannot pretend growth is free. The job of a mayor is to hold the two in tension: fund the services people rely on, and refuse the drift that makes year-round living unaffordable.
I will bring a steady hand to the budget line. That means priorities with names — roads, collection, core services — not a thousand small yeses that add up to a levy nobody voted for.
Making it more affordable for all Kawartha Lakes residents is not a slogan. It is the test. If a family working here cannot stay here, we have failed the people who built this place.
- Publish priorities before we publish a tax rate
- Challenge spending that does not serve roads, services, or the people who pay
- Keep urban and rural taxpayers in the same conversation — one city, one bill
Hold him to it.
A platform is a contract. If you want this work done, volunteer, put up a sign, and vote.