Candidates for October's municipal election in Vaughan trickle

Vaughan Citizen
January 15, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

The 2014 municipal election race has been uncharacteristically slow to get under way, but candidates vying for a spot on city council are trickling in.

Regional Councillor Michael Di Biase is among them.

“I enjoy my work here at the city,” the 65-year-old longtime councillor and former mayor said Tuesday after filing his nomination papers to run for regional councillor. “... I have the experience, I have the knowledge and I’m healthy, so why not continue and finish what I started?”

Mr. Di Biase was first elected in 1985 as a local councillor.

He served in that position until 1988 when he was elected regional councillor. He held that post until 2002 when he was appointed mayor after the death of then-mayor Lorna Jackson.

Mr. Di Biase was elected mayor in 2003, but lost his seat to Linda Jackson in a hotly contested 2006 election.

The veteran politician has been embroiled in numerous controversies during his tenure, but managed to garner the second highest number of votes among those vying for one of three regional council seats in 2010, finishing just behind Deputy Mayor Gino Rosati.

Mr. Di Biase said he’s seeking re-election because there are several major projects he’d like to see through to completion, such as the Vaughan hospital, the Hwy. 427 extension and development of the city’s future downtown core, dubbed the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC), among others.

“At the end of it all, I think most importantly, you’ve got to provide services for the residents,” he said. “You want to keep the same standard of service that they have, and try to improve it, and you want to make sure that taxes are kept reasonably low.”

Regional Councillor Deb Schulte and Thornhill Councillor Alan Shefman are also hoping to return to council.

They both filed their nomination papers last week.

Ms Schulte garnered 20,593 votes in the 2010 municipal election, beating out 10 other contenders, including veteran councillors Mario Ferri and Joyce Frustaglio, to grab the third regional council seat.

Ms Schulte was a driving force behind the efforts to kill the Vaughan casino during her first term on council.

She has also been a big proponent of making council more transparent, keeping urban sprawl in check as well as promoting cycling and other forms of sustainable transportation.

Ms Schulte said, if re-elected, she will continue pushing to keep taxes low “while providing high-quality services”, improve transportation and ensure development in the city is “sensitive to the community’s needs and is done in concert with infrastructure”.

“There’s a lot of really good stuff that still needs to be done and I’m only partly through what I was trying to get done when I got in here,” she said.

Mr. Shefman was first elected to office in 2003.

In the last election, he bested five opponents by garnering 5,561 votes, beating his closest rival, Gila Martow, by 1,282 votes.

Mr. Shefman said he’s seeking re-election because there are several projects he hopes to see through to completion, including upgrading parks in older areas of the city, creating the framework for a “prestigious” re-development of the Yonge St. and Steeles Ave. area to transform it into a “gateway” for the city and continuing to lobby for moving ahead with the Yonge St. subway extension, among other things.

“One of the fascinating things for me is the fact that, as I do this job and have done it over a number of years, there are always so many other things to do, so many undone projects, so many things that you want to do,” he said. “That’s what really drove me to run again is that there’s things that are still undone and I’m really, really hopeful to do them.”

At press time Wednesday, there were no candidates registered for council’s top post. Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua is widely expected to seek re-election.

To date, there are three candidates registered to run for trustee posts in the local school board races.

Voters go to the polls Oct. 27.