Places for youth, growth, traffic and that small town feeling

Heather Wright/The Independent

They are as young and eager, they are experienced in the world of municipal politics but all want the same thing; to give back to the place they call home.

Recently, all 12 of the candidates running for the six councillor positions in the Town of Petrolia sat down with The Independent at the Kerr Building in the Farmers’ Market to talk politics.

They had a chance to talk about themselves and why they’re running, answer some pointed questions and think deeply about what is important. The following is some of what was said. The entire conversation can be found below.

Here’s some of what they said;

• First time candidate Dawn Stilwell on getting up to speed on the issues of council. “The YouTube channel for all of the council meetings has been a very great resource. You get to see exactly what goes on, and I’m really sad to see how few people actually watch those because it’s a great resource.”
• Incumbent Chad Hyatt saying he’d stand up to a mayor using Strong Mayor Powers when used to push development through: “I’m of the opinion that not every development is a good development. … It’s got to have minimal impact to existing development if it’s new development…I don’t mind standing out in council.”
• Richard Poore the small-town spirit; “The whole small town thing – it’s an attitude, and I don’t think you’d be really hard pressed to squash that attitude in this community.”
• Bill Clark on the potential for hundreds of homes being built in Petrolia: “It’s not going to be a building boom….We’re going to have what I call measured growth, where it’s going to be a few houses each year, which hopefully is enough houses to help offset those extra costs.”
• John McDonald on keeping the small-town feeling in Petrolia as the community grows; “We ensure the green spaces are there, ensure the walkability is there, instead of just subdivisions getting shoved in that don’t fit into the small town.”
• Nicole Ramsay on how increased traffic will be a problem with growth. “It’s not going to be feel like a small town if we’re all struggling to try and park everywhere.”
• Liz Welsh on how the province has changed who has a say in planning; “This municipality has developed the way it has because we’ve had years of studies and guidelines and public input and input from planners and more studies and more guidelines, and we made sure that this town was developed the way we wanted it, and some of that is being taken away from us.”
• Ethan Brown on helping residents understand what’s going on at town hall; “If we’re out in the public and engaging the people, they can come forward and ask us the questions, and we can do that constituency work of saying this is where you go, this is the information.”
• Paul Stilwell on the possibility of both he and his wife, Dawn, winning a seat and holding 30 per cent of the vote on council. “I don’t see a problem with it. I really don’t… It’s case of building on strengths, not a case of trying to monopolize the council.”
• Marty Souch on accountability after not calling out the mayor when he banned him from in camera meetings in 2022. “I stood up to the residents all along at that time…It comes a time when you allow somebody to do something, knowing there’s no merit to it, you know. He can’t do it. It’s not worth the fight.”
• Greg Nemcek on engaging youth in the town; “You have a building over there (LCCVI) that has over 1,000 people in it, and they are young adults that are eager moving forward that want to do things. We need to tap into that a little more.”
• Miranda Cole on her dream of a youth centre; “The youth are uptown and you know they’re hanging out at Timmy’s parking lot….we have to give them a space where they can do something.”

You can hear the entire conversation here; but a caution, we used an iPhone for recording.

We begin asking the candidates for Petrolia Council to introduce themselves and explain why they’re running for council: