Inaugural Address

Welcome everybody to the inauguration of the 127th Council of the Town of Oakville.

I want to ask you to join me in a moment of reflection to honour former mayor Harry Barrett who passed away Friday. Many of us said farewell to him earlier today at a service held at St. John’s United Church.

Harry was able to capture what many of us feel about Oakville in one phrase:

“Oakville is a city that calls itself a town and acts like a village.”

Harry loved to say that and I hope that if we can keep that expression alive we will keep Harry alive among us.

His leadership and passion for our community has always inspired me and many others. We owe a great debt to him for championing heritage and waterfront protection. The Harry F. Barrett Waterfront Parks System ensures his memory will live on forever.

We can see both renewal and continuity in the results of our recent municipal election.

Here at the Town Council, we welcome four new members:

Ward 1 Town Councillor Beth Robertson, Ward 3 Town Councillor Janet Haslett-Theall, Ward 7 Town Councillor Jasvinder Sandhu and Ward 7 Town and Regional Councillor Pavan Parmar. They bring new eyes and new perspectives to the table.

They are joining returning town councillors Ray Chisholm from Ward 2, Peter Longo from Ward 4, Marc Grant from Ward 5, Natalia Lishchyna from Ward 6, and town and regional councillors Sean O’Meara from Ward 1, Cathy Duddeck from Ward 2, Dave Gittings from Ward 3, Allan Elgar from Ward 4, Jeff Knoll from Ward 5 and Tom Adams from Ward 6.

Our other council, the Halton Region Council will have 8 of 24 members who are new. That’s a fairly similar, not the same, but fairly similar ratio of renewal and continuity as we have here.

And so it appears to me that the direction of our split-level local government will continue in the general direction of the Livable Oakville and Sustainable Halton Official Plans, as we call our two intertwined official plans that guide our growth in this community.

We review our strategic plan and direction every year, to be sure we stay on course. As Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle once said, “Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.” And we can now see further than we could when we started to create the Livable Oakville Plan 12 years ago. Unfortunately, some of what we can see now poses possible threats to the Oakville way of life. I look forward optimistically to our ability to work together to keep moving forward because we have before.

In my time as mayor, we have solved at least ten great problems.

1. We have slowed growth to half the rate it was 12 years ago;
2. We doubled our community facilities;
3. We held total property tax increases to inflation or less for ten years even though we added so much to our facilities;
4. Our finances are the healthiest in Ontario;
5. We have increased our green space and our tree canopy;
6. We have kept the lowest crime rate among Ontario’s “Big 12” police services;
7. We defeated a power plant proposed too close to homes and schools;
8. We have held off and will continue to oppose a bid by ClubLink to destroy our most significant Cultural Heritage Landscape and our Livable Oakville Plan urban structure;
9. We remain Ontario’s best place to raise a family; and
10. We have risen within the MoneySense rankings from 30th to 1st place to become Canada’s best place to live and to be Canada’s best place for newcomers.

We can stay a leader in livability if we stay committed to five principles:

1. Controlling growth to only what fits our environment and our economics;
2. Protecting our cultural and natural heritage resources and greenspaces
3. Providing high-quality facilities and services our residents need and want;
4. Keeping our finances strong and healthy; and
5. Engaging and expanding mutual understanding with our Provincial masters.

I believe these five principles of livability will allow us to continue to successfully meet the challenges we face as we move forward.

Together we will protect our community’s vision of itself as reflected in our Livable Oakville official plan and its associated strategic plan. And that includes defending our official plan and our decision to refuse the development application on the Glen Abbey Golf Course.

Fortunately, Oakville’s new MPP, Stephen Crawford, took the following position in his election in June, and I quote with pleasure: “The people of Oakville have rallied together against the potential development of the Glen Abbey Golf Course and I personally stand with them,” he said.

“I vow,” he said, “to work tirelessly with the Save Glen Abbey grassroots community coalition and to do everything in my power to ensure that this important part of Oakville's cultural heritage is preserved for its citizens and for future generations.”

MPP Crawford also promised, and this is really important and MPP Triantafilopoulos repeated it tonight and I’m very grateful, Effie, for your repetition of this.

What MPP Crawford said was, “After the June 7th election, an Ontario PC government's approach will be to respect the local decisions of municipalities.”

We are counting on you two to deliver on this promise. We really believe that what we have going for us in Oakville is based on these principles of local decision making and we’re thrilled you subscribe to the same principles.

We know we have six other significant work objectives before us:

1. Relief of congestion with major road widenings and the Wyecroft Bridge;
2. Reconstruction of Lakeshore road and its streetscape in downtown Oakville to reinvigorate our downtown;
3. Completion of the needed recreational facilities in south and north Oakville;
4. Development of an innovation hub downtown and the Dr. Joseph Dableh life sciences high tech business park in north Oakville beside the new OTMH. (Here again we will need the help of our MPPs to show that we can be open for business, because the Province’s Growth Plan is actually holding up this project and this is actually a project that is 60 per cent the size of the Amazon HQ2 everybody wanted and this project has already chosen us and ready to go. We don’t have to compete to get it. We just have to get out of its way and really be open for business);
5. Using our Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan to engage the Province to fulfill its direct Constitutional responsibility for poverty in our community and encouraging local businesses to become Living Wage employers.
6. The legalization of marijuana and whether we want to have private retail stores in our town.

In April there will be private marijuana retail stores in Ontario.

The Province has given all new councils an opportunity and a deadline of January 22 to opt out of having private retail stores. Our new council will wait until our meeting on January 14 to decide if we opt out of having private store fronts in our community. Oakville values public consultation, and this way we can maximize the opportunity for public consultation, starting tonight. Before our next meeting, December 17, Council and the public will have a Staff Report with the very latest developments from the province’s on-going and evolving roll out of the cannabis market. This will give time over the holidays to everyone to consider the information. You can delegate at the January 14 Council meeting or connect with your Council members. Let me ask you to copy me, too.

An even more important public consultation is already underway.

The Ontario government has circulated a public consultation document called, “Increasing Housing Supply in Ontario”. We in the public are asked to let them know by January 25, 2019 how they can get a big increase in the speed and the number of houses being built. They want the public’s input on four things:

• How to make housing approvals faster.
• How to cut development charges that builders pay toward the costs of infrastructure, to make housing cheaper to build, presumably to motivate builders to build more.
• How to add new housing in our stable established neighbourhoods.
• How to get new housing opportunities in our heritage districts, areas and properties.

These four points go right to the heart of the Oakville way of life and our small town values and everything we have worked so hard at for the last 12 years.

So MPP Triantafilopoulos you now understand why I’m so thrilled to hear the renewal of the pledge to respect local decisions because I believe the average person in Oakville thinks we grow fast enough already thank you very much. In the rental market the government has already announced it will increase the supply of rental housing by removing rent controls on new rental housing to let rents go higher and that is to incentivise the construction of more rental units.

So I call on the residents need to clearly tell our MPPs how fast they want growth to be in Oakville. To tell our MPPs clearly how much of the costs of growth we want to pay on our property taxes. Already almost ten per cent of our property taxes goes to  subsidize builders.

We also need to be clear about how much we value our heritage areas and our stable established neighbourhoods. The nub, the essence of this property tax verses development charge dilemma is that any dollar that we can’t collect from builders from development charges winds up on our property taxes and that means you’re helping to buy people houses and I’m pretty sure that’s not what you came here for.

We need to be clear on what we want our Town’s future to look like for our children, their children and beyond.

So share your thoughts, residents of Oakville, with your MPP and copy me and your members of Council.

Here’s a suggestion for you to make and I will make it now to MPP Triantafilopoulos, how about the government remove the HST from housing instead of shifting more of the costs of development of new housing onto existing property tax payers. Development charges go only to needed growth infrastructure. HST goes to provincial general revenues.

I’m pleased that we have initiated regular meetings with MPP Crawford and his colleague who represents part of north Oakville, MPP Triantafilopoulos.

The first thing we’ve talked about is the government’s consultation on housing. We need the rest of Oakville to add your voices.

My colleagues and I are 100 per cent committed to serving all of our community.

I know that we will never shy away from our challenges.

And there will always be obstacles, twists and turns, and difficult situations to overcome, that we must be prepared to tackle what may come.

Winston Churchill once said, and it’s very inspirational, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

I am here to stand up for our town, its beliefs and its values. I am also here to listen. I hope to engage and expand what we know and can learn.

With your engagement I am confident Council and I can continue to help advance our community’s shared goals.

Oakville’s identity is shaped by the spirit of our residents and our thriving industries and by our relationship and connection to the land – just as it was with the First Nations who preceded us.

Oakville’s history and traditions, including those of the Mississaugas of the Credit, part of the Anishinabe Nation, point us to the path we follow to respect the land.

We should credit Harry Barrett for the start he gave us on the path we follow. If we continue to cherish our heritage it will help us keep moving forward, as we extend the path for those who follow. Harry’s spirit lives on in the Livable Oakville plan, of which he was so very proud. Let’s resolve to keep making Harry proud.

Introduction

Distinguished guests, fellow members of Council, staff, neighbours and friends. This date marks the start of the 126th term of Council since the incorporation of the Town of Oakville 157 years ago.

Eight years ago, Oakville’s voters chose me as the 38th person to hold this office. And in the just completed 2014 election, like the election before it, the voters gave me and the other returning members of Council a greater majority and mandate than before. It is a humbling and inspirational trust that you have placed in each of us.

This is a night of celebration and welcome – for our ten returning and two new members of Council. As we celebrate tonight, for me, our history keeps us company. Let us remember, when Oakville and Trafalgar Township merged in 1962, it was a time of great fiscal challenge, even danger. Oakville survived.

We should be proud of Oakville’s staying power. Even before 1962, we had weathered storms of challenging and hard times. And always we have done so while maintaining our identity, an identity you can see in our core values.

Our core values will guide us as we rise to meet the challenges that lie before us. Our challenges are not just local, but also national, provincial, and regional. We need to remember that problems can be opportunities in work clothes for the right people.

I am certain our town’s talent for working together with creativity and imagination makes us the right people to face what lies ahead. Let me share some of what I think these four groups of challenges mean for us.

Federal Challenges

First, there is a group of challenges that is national in origin with strong local impacts. They will be front and centre in next year’s federal election.

Will the federal government take up its responsibility to build the Infrastructure Canada’s cities and towns need?

Will the federal government manage the economy, immigration and growth to assure viable healthcare and a fair share for Oakville?

Provincial Challenges

The second set of challenges comes from our provincial government. Queen’s Park is working on or considering changes to 30 different things that impact us. We cannot be passive bystanders. We will actively engage and seek the best for Oakville in all these areas, and especially in the following 7:

The Police Services Act is undergoing its first review in more than 20 years. Although crime is falling, police are busier than ever as calls to the police for non-crime-related services are rising at an unsustainable rate. As a result, all municipalities are looking for help in controlling the rising cost of policing.

The Planning Act is under attack on the one hand by developers who want to reduce the amount of parkland they are currently required to give a municipality when they develop new homes. On the other hand, we, and others like us, are seeking changes that will allow us to make development better respect our local vision for our future.

Changes to the Municipal Act are also being sought, to increase transparency and accountability and to give all municipalities the same powers Toronto has.

The Building Code currently sets limits on what we can require of builders. We want a higher, greener standard of building that we can choose to require on new developments.

The Municipal Elections Act has not been reviewed in a generation. The Premier has promised to give municipalities the option of choosing ranked ballots over first-past-the-post voting. We will see what other opportunities for changes will present themselves during the review.

The Development Charges Act is under attack by a development industry that wants taxpayers to pay for more of the costs of growth. We are pushing back and trying to undo the harsh changes made by the Mike Harris government in 1997. We want development charges to contribute to all of the costs of creating a complete community.

Finally, a key provincial challenge for all GTA municipalities will be the consolidated review of the four plans that implement the Places to Grow Act and the associated greenspace protection acts: the Greenbelt Act, the Niagara Escarpment Act and the Oak Ridges Moraine Act. It’s been ten years since these four plans were put in place or reviewed. Can they restrain sprawl better? Can they make development less costly? Can they improve mobility by promoting better transit and transportation?

Regional Challenges

The third set of challenges is regional. During this term of office, the Region of Halton will review its official plan, which governs our town’s official plan, as well as its transportation master plan and development charges by-law. Also, Regional Council will be looking at ways to provide affordable housing and to protect our AAA credit rating.

Local Challenges

Our local set of challenges is just as important as the others. We need to continue controlling growth and tax increases as we work to achieve our goals on six key priorities:

1. We will preserve and protect trees, environmental quality, and precious green space, including all of the Merton Lands
2. We need to revitalize our historic downtowns and the cultural and social facilities that anchor them.
3. We want to finish renewing our community facilities such as Oakville Arena and prepare plans for the downtown cultural hub, streetscape and community centres for the old hospital lands and north park.
4. We must improve traffic flow with transportation infrastructure improvements.
5. We will make our contribution to the financing of our new Hospital without using taxes. We will use new revenues from business ventures created by our utility holding company, Oakville Hydro Corporation. These ventures are separate from our electricity distribution utility, called Oakville Hydro Electricity Distribution Inc., which is regulated by the province. So let me assure you our contribution to the hospital’s financing will have no impact on property taxes or electricity bills.
6. We also need to keep improving communication so residents know about our challenges and can contribute to our success in meaningful ways. It’s not always clear to me if all residents understand that they elect the majority of us in this chamber to look after more than just the town portion of municipal services. The Region, the Police, and the Town take most of our property taxes. We manage all three together to keep the total impact on tax payers as light and as sustainable as possible. We’re doing pretty well, too. Province-wide statistics show that the cost of municipal services as a per cent of household income is lowest in Oakville. We aim to keep it that way.

Trusting in Oakville’s Core Values

To succeed with all our challenges and opportunities will require us to keep true, as I mentioned we always do, to Oakville’s core values. We hear these values every day in what we hear from you, our fellow residents. Four values stand out:

1. Our first value that stands out is the importance of community. We see our town as a place where people support each other in meeting their needs and achieving their dreams. This value is evident today in our vibrant social and cultural sector. It is also evident in our pride in our history as a key destination to freedom for slaves on the Underground Railroad. It is evident in our focus on families in all stages of life. It shows in our satisfaction in nurturing and launching talented young people who achieve great things beyond our borders.
2. Our second value is pride in our small town character. Oakville residents cherish our historic downtowns, our waterfront and forest trails, our trees, our gardens, our traditions, our peace and quiet.
3. Our third value that stands out is safety. Oakville sees itself as a safe harbour – a safe place to raise children, welcome newcomers and protect the vulnerable. Our safety is the result of the great sense of community and small town character we nurture and protect.
4. Our fourth value speaks to how we guard our first three values: with a quiet, business-like discipline. People tell me all the time that they like it when we all work together to run the town like a business. They mean cooperating, respecting and listening to each other. They mean basing decisions on evidence, not emotion. They mean being careful with our resources. They mean finding the right people to do the jobs we need done and developing their talents to make them even better able to serve us successfully.

Our four core values of community, small-town character, safety and business-like discipline allow us to create and strengthen Oakville as a place where people flourish and enjoy life. Our values give us the strength and confidence to adapt to changing times and design a future that is sustainable yet true to our identity.

Council Leads, but we Work through Others

Finally, a word about leadership. The Municipal Act sets out unique duties for the Mayor as Head of Council and CEO. It mandates the Mayor to represent and promote the town and to provide leadership to Council. My brand of leadership has always gratefully welcomed advice in being the best I can be to do the following five things:

1. First, to model the way so that everyone can see the most effective behaviours to achieve our shared vision.
2. Second, to inspire a shared vision so that we can all work together for the greatest possible common good.
3. Third, to challenge the process so that we are continuously improving our ability to achieve our shared vision.
4. Fourth, to enable others to act so that everyone’s passion and creativity can help achieve our shared vision.
5. Fifth, to encourage the heart in everyone so that we can persevere to success in our shared vision.

As for Council, we Members of Council set policies. Staff provide options. We Members of Council make choices. Councillors move and second motions here to give effect to those choices. As head of council, as your mayor, what falls to me is to conduct meetings to help people take turns being heard. With only one vote, no mayor can ever tell anyone what to do.

We have set a goal to be the most livable town in Canada. But we are not alone in seeking to be a better place to live. We have competition. Other people and places will always be challenging us for the lead. So we must always strive to be better than we are now. With this new, 126th term of council and its now even stronger mandate from you, the people of Oakville, I am confident that, working together, we can meet our challenges in a way that will allow us to successfully continue our quest to be the most livable town in Canada.

Thank you, Oakville, for your trust and confidence in us. You have chosen an outstanding Council that embodies your hopes and dreams for this Town of Oakville we all love so much. With your support and guidance for us, your chosen representatives, the only direction for Oakville is onward and upward!

Finishing the Unfinished Town

Your Honour Mr. Justice Hourigan, MPP Flynn, Chair Carr, Members of Council, Chief Administrative Officer Green, Commissioners, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for joining us to usher in a new term of the Council of the Corporation of the Town of Oakville.

Our fellow citizens voted in record numbers in the recent town election. They gave 11 of us a renewed and strengthened mandate. They gave the two of us who are newly elected a chance to join in facing our unfinished work and any challenges the future may put in our way. But "Problems can become opportunities when the right people get together to work on them," Robert Redford said, and the next four years will show if we are the kind of people he was talking about.

All who labour to create a path to a better future for Oakville know ours is an unfinished town at a unique point in its history. Just as the last 30 years was shaped by the 1978 Official Plan, our new Livable Oakville plan will guide us over the next decades to build out. We will plan and create the future that will define Oakville long after us. Over the next four years we will complete the greenprint for our future. Then we will work to finish our town to the design we began four years ago and called Livable Oakville.

Our common good

We on Council work in concert with our community for our common goals in a town of people devoted to the common good. Oakville residents are uncommonly community-minded and volunteer-spirited. A friend recently sent me a photo of 60 boys and girls at a tournament we organized when they were 11 or 12 years old. My friend added this caption to the photo: "Every one of these kids is either in college or university now."

Isn't this what Oakville is really about: people coming together and taking responsibility for raising the next generations? Our safe and attractive town does not happen by accident. We make it happen. We take care of each other. We volunteer. We invest in civic facilities. We provide opportunities for good things to happen. We create and maintain a strong and resilient public realm, so the part of Oakville life that we all share in common is as livable as we can make it. We work to be part of something better than we can be by ourselves.

Four years ago, many of us remembered what the world famous urban planner Andres Duany had said about Oakville when he visited us in 2003. He commented on one of the ways that Oakville was an unfinished town. He said some in Oakville had figured out how to create wonderfully livable private places to live their private lives but we had not learned how to create correspondingly livable public places to live the public part of our lives.

And public places are the lifeblood of any society. We meet each other as equals in public places. When we gather at George's Square on Remembrance Day ... when we bring a new generation of children to the Santa Claus Parade ... when we encounter each other at the park, on the trail, on the bus, at the arena or field or theatre or library, we are all equals. We share in the activities of everyday life in safety and security and doing our best to reach our potential as individuals and as a community.

Four years ago, we set out to put Oakville on a path to become the most livable town in Canada. We invested in the public realm. We built a new, more expressive memorial in George's Square to commemorate the sacrifices made for the freedom we treasure today. We built a new library, new sports facilities, new transit facilities. We invested in public infrastructure. We built new roads, new sidewalks, and new sewer and water facilities. We created an aspirational plan for the future. And the voters endorsed us and our work.

Our common goals

The members of this Council campaigned for a number of priorities for this term. Let me highlight the objectives that you can expect we will achieve over the next four years.

Our priorities begin with controlling growth. We know we will grow. What matters is how, and how fast. In other words, how well will we keep up with the needs of a growing public realm to serve the growing private realm. The most urgent thing we have to do when we get our new Official Plan ordered by the Ontario Municipal Board is to bring our zoning by-laws into alignment with the Official Plan. This work will take up to three years, and it will complete the "Control Growth" agenda of this and our previous Council.

• We will work with the Province to create Greener Building Standards so we can reduce the environmental footprint of the new homes to be built in Oakville over the next 20 years.
• Growth has not been aligned with our representation by wards on council. One ward, the northwest, is approaching nearly one-third of the town's population but has only one-sixth the representation. We will address this
• We will work to create an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan -- a long-term strategic plan that identifies goals for sustainability and provides direction for how to get there.
• We will protect our Health Protection Air Quality By-law and Do No Harm planning rules.
• We will strengthen our Private Tree Protection By-law.
• We will begin construction of our long needed modern new Hospital.
• We will study creation of a unified Heritage District to unite our existing three districts.
• We will update our Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Library Master Plan, and finalize our Harbours Plan.
• We will work to create a new summer event to celebrate our waterfront.
• We will nurture our local economy's prosperity. We will bring new employment lands on line. We will pursue new employment ideas suggested in the Creative Oakville Report. We will support our Business Improvement Areas. We will begin redeveloping the Bronte Mall and the Kerr and Speers Mall and the Midtown urban growth centre. We will encourage local employment by making it easier for people to get to work at local jobs as we complete the rollout of our Transit plan.
• We will conduct the public consultation we have become known for in the creation of plans for re-use of public lands at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, Oakville Trafalgar High School, Brantwood, Linbrook, and Chisholm public schools, the old Oakville Arena, and Centennial Square.
• The redevelopment of the old military housing lands on Dorval already is proceeding according to Council's unanimous plan and will be completed in this term of Council.
• We will develop more new business revenues from our local utility with district energy systems, and solar panel power on roof tops across town.
• We will continue our road renewal catch-up to get our road quality up to 100 per cent by 2022.
• We will complete our catch-up on our deficit in community facilities with the opening next year of the Queen Elizabeth Park community centre & our new Transit Depot.
• We will work to create more opportunities for Habitat for Humanity following on the success of our first two Habitat projects this year.
• We will create more bike paths and more trails.
• We will begin construction of our Oakville Harbour west shore plan, and complete it in five years.
• We will acquire and open to the public more public waterfront.
• We will implement a plan to achieve our goal of 40 per cent tree cover in 50 years.
• We will continue to clear snow, remove leaves, mow parks, plant flowers, water trees and enforce bylaws to maintain the level of quality we achieved over the last four years.
• We will create a Lobbyist Registry to increase transparency.
• We will continue to work to attract and develop the high quality staff necessary to deliver these programs, services and facilities so the Town can continuously improve what it does and become more sustainable.
• We will be facing a wave of retirements and a wide-spread labour shortage in the years ahead. We need to be sure we have the right policies so we can compete successfully with the private sector for the best employees. This responsibility is just like the core responsibility of any board of directors of any business corporation.
• We on Council are the policy-setting component of civic government. The Province in its wisdom has created Oakville's government as a corporation. We are not managers - the law sees to it that we have a professional civil service to manage the programs and services we approve. We will repeat the highly successful seminars we ran last term for staff, Council, and the public to understand the what, how and why of our governance. This will reduce chances of lost time for people barking up the wrong trees.

These are our goals for the next four years. As we achieve them, the more livable Oakville will become and the more sustainable it will be.

Our common style

You may expect me to work with all members of Council to achieve our common goals. You may expect me to approach our collaboration with a style based on the words of Oscar Peterson in mind, who said, "You not only have to know your own instrument; you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz." The Jazz Festival is Oakville's most successful public event, and remember, the result you get in jazz depends on listening and responding to one another, not following a conductor.

You are entitled to expect all members of Council will be responsive to their constituents and each other, reflective of their election commitments, and responsible to the whole town. Oscar Peterson had advice for individual players, too, when he said: "It's the group sound that's important even when you're playing a solo." This is a Council with a strong foundation of working together effectively.

We find consensus when we engage with each other and expand each other's understanding of the facts each of us brings to a discussion. When we agree on what the facts and the opportunities and challenges are, the path is almost always obvious. This approach leads us away from unnecessary disputes and towards good, long lasting decisions. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company said, "Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success."

The future and what we provide for our children is what keeps me going. That's what seems to keep my colleagues going, too. Members of this council come from all walks of life. What we have in common is all of us are parents. Some are grandparents. Our passions and hobbies are as different as you can imagine. All of us have extensive records of community service and volunteerism. We bring different experiences and perspectives to our work on council, but share a commitment to keeping Oakville a great place to raise a family.

The things we need to do together for each other are the things that make us the community we are. That's what one of our greatest Canadians, William Osler, had in mind when he said, "We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it." We will work as hard as we know how to add what we can to life in Oakville.

Please give us your prayers, your good will and your patient understanding as we give the same to you. Together, when we work with vision, creativity and imagination we create a town capable of overcoming great challenges and achieving great goals. Together, we will make the future of our unfinished town brighter, cleaner, greener, more sustainable and more resilient. Together, let us work to make our unfinished town the complete community we all want our town to become.

Your Honour. Members of Provincial Parliament, and Council. Ladies and gentlemen. Friends and family members. Thank you for attending the Inaugural Meeting of our new Council.

Our collective commitment to Oakville assures us all of a bright future. How could it not, when what we call home is a community as diverse, as talented, as wealthy in ideas and experience as Oakville. We will be calling on all members of our community to help create and sustain our town's bright future.

We live in a community of people of great and diverse achievement and even greater promise. Our community of excellence lifts us up as we on Council seek to serve Oakville's needs.

The opportunity to serve you as your Mayor is exciting. You can count on all my energy and commitment to advance our town and achieve our shared goals and face our challenges.

Over the past two weeks, there has been an energetic outpouring of warm appreciation and high expectations and inspiring ideas from our community, from our town staff, and from new and returning Members of Council.

You may want to know how we will translate into reality the vision that has brought us all together.

If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a team to reach a goal. My aim will be to listen, to lead, and when possible, even to inspire our team.

Together, we now will create a game plan, a plan of action for the next four years. Our plan will deliver on the vision of a more Livable Oakville that the voters endorsed in the recent election.

Our plan to realize the vision for "Livable Oakville" first will benefit current residents. It also will provide for the future residents we will welcome over the years ahead.

We will have the new community facilities we need so we and our children have access to recreation, the arts and culture and social interaction that creates and sustains a community.

We will have people-first planning that protects and preserves our neighbourhoods and makes certain that growth benefits all residents.

We will spotlight the real costs of growth for our community. We will ensure that those costs are met by those who reap the benefits.

We will protect, preserve and enhance our environment. These are words to which our Official Plan has long committed us. These will be the words by which we will test our decisions.

We will attack the causes of traffic gridlock. We also will protect our neighbourhoods from traffic impacts that rob them of the quiet enjoyment we all expect.

We will work within the town's fiscal ability. We will work to assure that the Region of Halton, of which Oakville is a major part, will respect its fiscal limits, too.

We will put the town's fiscal house in order. Your talented town staff and we, your Council, will create a budget for 2007 that clearly sets out our current fiscal situation and plans. We will control and manage our budget responsibly.

We will create a long-term capital forecast to identify the major capital building projects that the town will require over the next 10 years. We will update it annually.

And we will share all of this with the community. You will have enough time and information to make meaningful contributions to your town's plans.

We on your new Council building positive working relationships and we will work together cooperatively to achieve the goals you have chosen. You will see us demonstrate to each other and to public delegations the power of positive listening. All sides of discussions will experience courtesy and respect.

We will work hard to be certain our decisions are understood in terms of their benefit to Oakville. We all want you to have confidence that when we make a decision as Council, it will be in the best interests of the entire community.\

The success of Oakville will be based on more than just the efforts and decisions of this Council as we work to lift us up as a community.

Oakville's success as a community also depends on the contributions of thousands of volunteers who do incredible amounts of work across the town we all love. Their acts of charity, mercy, and involvement lift us up as a town.

Oakville's success is also based upon the daily hard work and creative inspirations that drive the success of our residents and businesses. We recognize that they, too, lift us up.

We encourage each of you to look for opportunities to get involved and serve your community. You have heard the saying, "When a lot of people do a lot of little things, big things happen." Together, we will make big things happen for our remarkable town!

On behalf of all members of Council, thank you for the chance to work for you. All of us on your 2006-2010 Council are dedicated to making a difference for you and our future generations.