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Article from the Waterloo Region Record - a good read!
By Luisa D'AmatoReporter
Luisa D'Amato is a Waterloo Region Record columnist. Reach her by email at ldamato@therecord.com.
The municipal election is less than four weeks away.
There has been a lot of anguish about some local issues, such as the water supply shortage earlier this year.
But, looking over the candidates, I am not seeing that unhappiness translate into a group of people who are running for office to change the way business is done.
Instead, I sense overwhelming financial exhaustion from the public, who can’t sustain property tax increases that continue to outpace inflation.
We’re seeing this in increased numbers of homeowners who have fallen into arrears with their property taxes, and the knowledge that it could get worse as the trade war with the United States grinds on.
Meanwhile, it stings that some municipal services are being taken away, despite those tax increases.
A small but powerful example of that is the latest decision by Waterloo regional councillors to stop picking up discarded Christmas trees and turning them into wood chips.
That service had kept those trees out of the landfill. But now, to save $540,000, the trees will either be picked up as a “bulky” item and sent to the landfill, or you can pay a non-profit organization to cart it away.
You won’t see your taxes go down because of that saved money. But you’ve lost a service. And it grates on everyone to pay more, but receive less.
The mayoral races could be an interesting flash point. Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic seems the safest of the three city mayors. Two reasons: Kitchener’s tax increases have been the lowest among the three cities, and Vrbanovic is highly visible in public and on social media. He has been mayor for 12 years. At regional council, he also fought to minimize damage to the construction industry and its jobs when there was a freeze on new builds because of the water shortage.
Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe has a serious challenger. That’s Shannon Weber, who came within 331 votes of beating her in 2022. Weber is running again this time, and points out that taxes in Waterloo have risen nearly 27 per cent over four years.
McCabe has made meaningful progress on affordable housing, leveraging city-owned land to create affordable and attainable units through Habitat for Humanity. This is the most important issue for Waterloo residents, next to affordability. But it will take years for residents to see the results of the seeds she has planted.
In Cambridge, the formidable Jan Liggett challenged and beat one-term mayor Kathryn McGarry in 2022, in part because the Blair community was unhappy about McGarry’s support for the massive Amazon warehouse that has been built there.
Now, Liggett has her own formidable challenger after just one term.
Coun. Scott Hamilton has been actively campaigning for the mayor’s job since spring, and his campaign team says he’s about to cross the threshold for a million steps walked.
There are clear ideological divisions between these two candidates that should make it an easy decision for most residents.
Another example: Hamilton supports extending light rail transit to Cambridge. By contrast, Liggett was the only elected official to reject the idea at Waterloo regional council last November. She said it was the wrong route, and too costly. Rapid buses would be more efficient for the city, she said.
The three city mayors and four township mayors make up almost half of regional council, and the remainder of the 16 positions, except for the chair, will be directly elected by voters of the three cities. Kitchener has four of those representatives, and Waterloo and Cambridge have two each.
Regional council has struggled with some massive issues this term. Taxes have risen far above inflation year over year, as regional council gave itself the worthy but expensive goal of its Plan to End Chronic Homelessness.
Waterloo Region is spending $65.5 million this year on services to homeless people, plus another $1.7 million on legal fees in fruitless attempts to evict homeless people in an encampment at Weber and Victoria streets in Kitchener.
Tens of millions more were spent on new staff and equipment as the region struggled to get control of its water shortage crisis this year.
Elected councillors had been told everything was fine, until late 2025 when it was suddenly announced that there wasn’t enough water in the system to allow new builds in Kitchener, Waterloo, parts of Cambridge, Wilmot, and Woolwich.
It was clear someone had allowed important infrastructure to break down, such as the equipment that filters organic matter out of the water from the Grand River before it gets treated. This had reduced the supply.
Coun. Doug Craig proposed an outside expert should be hired to study how this had been allowed to happen. Council unanimously agreed. Unfortunately, the report won’t be released until after the election.
The water crisis has also called into question whether the region can comfortably grow to one million people by 2051. There should be discussion about this during the election. That’s an issue the regional chair should be taking on.
But we don’t get to vote for a regional chair this year.
Premier Ford has, unconscionably, taken that power out of the hands of local residents and will appoint a chair. For this, he should face the reckoning of voters in the next provincial election.
Finally, there is also the looming and related question of the industrial mega-site that is planned for Wilmot Township.
It will destroy 770 acres of prime farmland. Its industrial activity may pose a threat to groundwater supplies nearby. It is also a gamble: it may host a factory with many well-paying jobs, or it may host a facility, such as a data centre, creating almost no jobs.
Most importantly, there has not been a single public meeting about the industrial site, and it also has not been discussed in public by elected officials, who are bound by a nondisclosure agreement most of them didn’t even sign.
But it’s something to ask those elected officials about, at a time when they are most open to hearing from us.
By Luisa D'AmatoReporter
Luisa D'Amato is a Waterloo Region Record columnist. Reach her by email at ldamato@therecord.com.
The municipal election is less than four weeks away.
There has been a lot of anguish about some local issues, such as the water supply shortage earlier this year.
But, looking over the candidates, I am not seeing that unhappiness translate into a group of people who are running for office to change the way business is done.
Instead, I sense overwhelming financial exhaustion from the public, who can’t sustain property tax increases that continue to outpace inflation.
We’re seeing this in increased numbers of homeowners who have fallen into arrears with their property taxes, and the knowledge that it could get worse as the trade war with the United States grinds on.
Meanwhile, it stings that some municipal services are being taken away, despite those tax increases.
A small but powerful example of that is the latest decision by Waterloo regional councillors to stop picking up discarded Christmas trees and turning them into wood chips.
That service had kept those trees out of the landfill. But now, to save $540,000, the trees will either be picked up as a “bulky” item and sent to the landfill, or you can pay a non-profit organization to cart it away.
You won’t see your taxes go down because of that saved money. But you’ve lost a service. And it grates on everyone to pay more, but receive less.
The mayoral races could be an interesting flash point. Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic seems the safest of the three city mayors. Two reasons: Kitchener’s tax increases have been the lowest among the three cities, and Vrbanovic is highly visible in public and on social media. He has been mayor for 12 years. At regional council, he also fought to minimize damage to the construction industry and its jobs when there was a freeze on new builds because of the water shortage.
Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe has a serious challenger. That’s Shannon Weber, who came within 331 votes of beating her in 2022. Weber is running again this time, and points out that taxes in Waterloo have risen nearly 27 per cent over four years.
McCabe has made meaningful progress on affordable housing, leveraging city-owned land to create affordable and attainable units through Habitat for Humanity. This is the most important issue for Waterloo residents, next to affordability. But it will take years for residents to see the results of the seeds she has planted.
In Cambridge, the formidable Jan Liggett challenged and beat one-term mayor Kathryn McGarry in 2022, in part because the Blair community was unhappy about McGarry’s support for the massive Amazon warehouse that has been built there.
Now, Liggett has her own formidable challenger after just one term.
Coun. Scott Hamilton has been actively campaigning for the mayor’s job since spring, and his campaign team says he’s about to cross the threshold for a million steps walked.
There are clear ideological divisions between these two candidates that should make it an easy decision for most residents.
Hamilton was a New Democratic Party candidate in the 2019 federal election but states he no longer has any political affiliation. He generally favours more government action to improve the lives of people in Cambridge. One example: In 2023, Hamilton called for staff to study the idea of a developer building affordable housing over city-owned parking lots; the buildings would be on pillars so the lots could still be used, and the homes would have been affordable because there wouldn’t have been costs
But his proposal to just to study the issue, failed 5-4. Liggett voted against it.Another example: Hamilton supports extending light rail transit to Cambridge. By contrast, Liggett was the only elected official to reject the idea at Waterloo regional council last November. She said it was the wrong route, and too costly. Rapid buses would be more efficient for the city, she said.
The three city mayors and four township mayors make up almost half of regional council, and the remainder of the 16 positions, except for the chair, will be directly elected by voters of the three cities. Kitchener has four of those representatives, and Waterloo and Cambridge have two each.
Regional council has struggled with some massive issues this term. Taxes have risen far above inflation year over year, as regional council gave itself the worthy but expensive goal of its Plan to End Chronic Homelessness.
This should be a provincial and federal responsibility, but Premier Doug Ford has downloaded this expensive and difficult social
problem to municipalities, so that he can keep provincial taxes down.
problem to municipalities, so that he can keep provincial taxes down.
Waterloo Region is spending $65.5 million this year on services to homeless people, plus another $1.7 million on legal fees in fruitless attempts to evict homeless people in an encampment at Weber and Victoria streets in Kitchener.
Tens of millions more were spent on new staff and equipment as the region struggled to get control of its water shortage crisis this year.
Elected councillors had been told everything was fine, until late 2025 when it was suddenly announced that there wasn’t enough water in the system to allow new builds in Kitchener, Waterloo, parts of Cambridge, Wilmot, and Woolwich.
It was clear someone had allowed important infrastructure to break down, such as the equipment that filters organic matter out of the water from the Grand River before it gets treated. This had reduced the supply.
Coun. Doug Craig proposed an outside expert should be hired to study how this had been allowed to happen. Council unanimously agreed. Unfortunately, the report won’t be released until after the election.
And finally, a few words about the elephant in the room, and voting powers that we should be able to exercise, but have been taken away.
The water crisis has also called into question whether the region can comfortably grow to one million people by 2051. There should be discussion about this during the election. That’s an issue the regional chair should be taking on.
But we don’t get to vote for a regional chair this year.
Premier Ford has, unconscionably, taken that power out of the hands of local residents and will appoint a chair. For this, he should face the reckoning of voters in the next provincial election.
Finally, there is also the looming and related question of the industrial mega-site that is planned for Wilmot Township.
It will destroy 770 acres of prime farmland. Its industrial activity may pose a threat to groundwater supplies nearby. It is also a gamble: it may host a factory with many well-paying jobs, or it may host a facility, such as a data centre, creating almost no jobs.
Most importantly, there has not been a single public meeting about the industrial site, and it also has not been discussed in public by elected officials, who are bound by a nondisclosure agreement most of them didn’t even sign.
But it’s something to ask those elected officials about, at a time when they are most open to hearing from us.
