Markham council priorities: transit, seniors issues, housing take the lead

Councillors, mayor tell you their plans for this council term

YorkRegion.com
January 4, 2019
Tim Kelly

Markham's 13 elected municipal politicians have a wide range of top priorities for this coming term of municipal council, but there are some fairly common themes when you start to dig deeper.

Top of mind for several councillors was transit and transportation issues, specifically gridlock and improving transit links throughout the city.

A few of the councillors also said they were worried about Markham's seniors and wanted to do something about their issues, focusing on affordable housing specifically.

Others cited other individual issues such as focusing on Rouge National Park, finding the funding for the cancelled York University project, taking a hard look at the city's parking bylaws, establishing Neighbourhood Watch programs and finding innovative new ways to get rid of waste.

To see what your elected representatives feel is the No. 1 issue in your city and what they will focus on over the next term in office -- among other things -- read on.

Ward 1 Coun. Keith Irish: "We’ve got to do something about gridlock. We can look at the timing of our traffic lights, we can look at the timing of our advanced greens, we can harmonize our transit fares I hope through the region with Viva and the TTC to make it more economical to hop a bus and make a connection to the TTC route network."

Ward. 2 Coun. Alan Ho: "Seniors issues are very important for me. I am going advocate for them, for affordable housing, free bus fares and we need to have public washrooms in all our parks."

Ward 3 Coun. Reid McAlpine: "Housing affordability. I will work with all stakeholders to implement new requirements and incentives for the development of purpose-built rental housing. Lack of affordable housing is holding the whole community back economically and socially."

Ward. 4 Coun. Karen Rea: "We need to have more diversity in housing. Markham needs more purpose-built rentals, more bungalows, more duplexes, more triplexes and it also needs to have more seniors housing."

Ward. 5 Coun. Andrew Keyes: "In my heart of hearts, it’s taking care of seniors, trying to advocate for seniors, only so much we can do at the municipal level in funding and providing housing but I think we can advocate for better services for seniors."

Ward. 6 Coun. Amanda Collucci: "I want a review of our current parking bylaw. We need a very thorough public consultation just to kind of solicit public opinion to see what we want to do, whether residents want to pave their front lawn, to park on the streets or just to keep it status quo."

Ward. 7 Coun. Khaled Usman: "It’s all about the traffic issues I’ve had in my area. I have to do something about Steeles and 14th Avenue. Traffic is definitely No. 1."

Ward 8 Coun. Isa Lee: "A neighbourhood Watch program. I’ve heard a lot of concerns regarding safety in the neighbourhood and a lot of neighbours' houses have been broken into and some of the neighbours have formed an informal neighbourhood watch program. Would hope to revive that program."

Regional Coun. Jack Heath: "Rouge National Urban Park. We haven’t finished the negotiations with Parks Canada and the city has major requests and major issues that it wants to raise with that negotiation so that we can transfer 300 to 400 acres mainly to housing but also to recreation for residents."

Regional Coun. Jim Jones: "Burying hydro lines, developing high-speed rail and rail-integrated communities. Hydro lines take about 200 metres and sterilize another 100, so by burying them in a six-to-nine metre duct I free up tons of land and we can do rail and with land-value capture we can bury the hydro lines, do the rail and have rail-integrated communities."

Regional Coun. Joe Li: "I have to finish my waste-collection system. Would be banning trucks from coming to neighbourhoods to pick up waste. Everything should be done through underground delivery. It would be connected by pipe underground."

Deputy Mayor/Regional Coun. Don Hamilton: "My priorities have changed for the city. The withdrawal of provincial funding for York University has left the city in a bad spot. We were counting on York University being an anchor and a draw as part of the overall vision for a vibrant downtown. That project was essentially 'shovel ready' and now it's been sidetracked. So we need to secure funding and get it built."

Mayor Frank Scarpitti: "Transportation is going to be one of the highest priorities in this coming term for me for sure among a list of many priorities. But the only way we can get things done is by working through council, staff and the community."