Question 5. Towns need to differentiate themselves in order to compete for potential residents and businesses to relocate to their locale. Studies show that tourists who visit areas for History Tourism spend twice as much as an average tourist. Heritage Districts have popped up all over the country bringing much needed jobs and tourists. The current town council has stalled the implementation of a ready to go Heritage District in Town. Will you work with Town Administration and Heritage Committee to bring a much needed Heritage District to Amherstburg.

Question 4.  Council members currently receive their notes on the Friday before the council meeting, just days before to digest a large amount of information. In other municipalities council receives much more time to digest and are actually briefed on the several pages of documents they are responsible to read. Is it any wonder that there were several disagreements on partially understood information? How will you change the process at Town Hall to bring them in alignment with other municipalities? How will you design the process so it is less of a speed read and more of a conversation based on information that is well understood?

2014 then-candidate Aldo DiCarlo

This is a pretty easy question to answer, as it was also an issue with the members of the University Of Windsor Board Of Governors when I was a member. Everyone digests and understands at different rates and levels. I don’t believe that there is any concrete timeframe that applies to everyone. The next council should discuss and agree on what a ‘reasonable’ amount of time is. Then, they should stick to it. If information is not available within the prescribed time, post pone the meeting. I know there are those who might argue the inconvenience to those who have planned for the date posted, but then I ask, “Would you rather have a meeting with councillors who aren’t prepared to properly address issues now, or would you rather they deal with the issues when they fully understand the agenda, and have had time for proper consultation with any citizens necessary?” As a final thought, a mayor and council who are abreast of issues, and stay informed with ongoing issues, won’t likely be presented with much they don’t already understand. This is not to say that I, nor anyone else, can know everything or anything all of the time, but part of the job of council is know their municipality’s issues, citizens, concerns and needs. No one person can know the whole town, but if everyone on council knows something, collectively they can know quite a lot. This would include what they don’t know, and need to find out. I’m not someone who is afraid, or opposed, to admit when they need more information.

Question 3. There is no shortage of stories of lottery winners who go broke within 5 years of their big win. One reason they go broke is because they have not learned money management skills. With only a partial audit to learn from Amherstburg Town Hall and Administration are risking a repeat of their past mistakes. There has been a herculanian effort to avoid a full audit, how can we learn what really went wrong without a full audit? Do you support a full independent audit of the town’s finances over the past 5 years?

This is a difficult question to answer with the understanding that the cost would not be cheap. On one hand, I agree wholeheartedly that a full audit should have been approved and done by the past council, since they were the elected representatives at the time, and they should be held accountable for whatever may have come from a full audit. Some reports and investigations have been done that elude to the lack of understanding of the past councillors when it comes to finances and budgets. It is not fair to say all councillors, but some, and I’m sure everyone has some in mind. What seems to be coming to light is that there really is no smoking gun, to coin a phrase. The trouble the town is in can only be explained by what appears to be a complete lack of understanding of what was going on, who was doing what, what they were supposed to be doing and what they were supposed to know. Outside of my bid for the mayor’s seat, as a tax paying citizen, I can’t believe that we had paid, and unpaid, people in town hall with so little understanding of what was going on. I believe this can begin to be rectified with a new council. If new councillors are elected who actually understand finances, budgeting and oversight, I’m not sure that we need to spend any more money on the past. The town still has plenty of issues to address, issues that will require money to fix, and that money would be better served going towards those issues. With no disrespect to all of the previous councillors, I don’t understand why it is being proposed that no one could have known what to ask or do. There were those who did, yet they were silenced. If a mayor and councillors are elected that were part of those who voted in favour of issues without the proper understanding, or at least accepting that they weren’t educated with the issue enough to proceed without more information, then I’d be demanding a full audit so they can see what went wrong more clearly. If a new council is elected with a proper balance of backgrounds, backgrounds related to the Town’s issues, I believe they can move us forward without having to spend money, as they would already understand most of what went wrong in the past.