Last note!

Elections are today and this has been a great campaigning season. I just want to thank you all for the great conversations, the great opportunity to discuss my platforms and my concerns for the ward.

I am at the end of the day of a defender and vocal spirit in the ward. Ward 30 is my home just like yours and I only want to continue to see it's growth and prosper into a liveable, growing safe community that it can be.

I think that City Hall needs an overhaul, the budget doesn't really make sense and we need to make sure that the property taxes we do pay go to items that make sense and not contracts that are only for certain interest groups or agendas that work for certain political parties. I am not affiliated in any sense to any party as we are first citizens of our ward and political parties have no place in running our neighbourhoods.

Transit needs to make sense for us all, TTC is almost shameful, no proper future growth and expansion has been put into place, millions spent on making old stations beautiful while growth seems so far away. Some want to take street cars away, which for our ward is the only way to get around as buses are almost non-existent 30 minute intervals to move our ward citizens around is not acceptable, Jones, Greenwood and Pape buses could be better utilised.

Our beautiful Portlands... I am a fan of Cherry Beach, and I think it's the hidden jewel of the city. That Gardiner extension was removed so long ago, and no effort has been made to make the Portlands the best gr,een space Toronto could have, instead David Miller touted his beautiful Sugar Beach while our Cherry got looked over once again. Time for someone to defend the beach, it deserves more attention than it gets.

We have some GREAT neighbourhoods, with diverse community and we are steps from the downtown core, but Toronto Council has deemed us the big dumping ground that no one cares about, from the concrete pads, the Streetcar depot to where the TDSB sees the ease at closing schools and pools. These are unacceptable as we are a growing ward with young families whose kids will soon enough to be entering the schools they are shutting so rapidly.

Crime is growing in the ward, from Mom and Pop convenience stores being held up, to shootings on the Danforth, to drug deals infront of citizens on Queen St. grow ops on our small neighbourhood streets, we need someone who is willing to mediate the police to make sure there is a presence without a scare tactic, that foot patrol and bike police is higher, that mothers feel safe in parks, that dog walkers feel ease at all hours of the day and that we can be the best ward in the City, we have that great potential, I believe this to be true, because I live here.

So when you decide, for those of you who might still be on the fence, think about voting for someone who gets it, who lives it and really wants the changes they describe. I was here before I put up my candidacy for the ward, and truth be told I will be here afterwards as well.

Tell your neighbours, your friends, your loved ones and even your enemies to make sure they go out and vote, because this is OUR ward, this is OUR future and we need to take responsibility for making it the best place ever!