The Mayor's Record for Keeping Election Promises Part 1 of 2

With the calendar changing from year one to two, I thought it would be an ideal time to review the election campaign promises of each member of Council and provide Newmarket ratepayers with an opportunity to gauge each Councillor on his/her performance to date. Today’s edition focuses on Mayor Tony Van Bynen

With all due respect for Michael Cascione’s noble gesture of giving voters the opportunity to cast a ballot, Mayor Van Bynen ran unopposed in 2010. As such, there are very few campaign promises to compare his track record with.

In his mayoralty campaign kick-off material, Mayor Van Bynen made five key promises:

1. To reduce the rate of taxation without affecting services
2. To attract a medical university and health sciences research facility to Newmarket
3. To bolster shared digital infrastructure and reduce traffic congestion and pollution through Smart Commute
4. To construct a women’s shelter
5. To attract new businesses and keep the downtown heritage district a good place for business

Has he kept his word?

On the question of property taxes, Mayor Van Bynen’s record is not good. In 2011, he raised our taxes and Council voted another increase for 2012. What’s in store for the remainder or his term? If the newspaper is reporting it correctly, the forecast calls for higher taxes in 2013 and 2014 too. As if high taxes weren’t already a burden, don’t forget that we are facing higher water rates and increases in user fees.

In 2011, Mayor Van Bynen blamed the tax increase on the fire department hiring new firefighters. Seeing as only a few months separated his campaign release and the implementation of the 2011 budget, why didn’t the Mayor tell us about what was coming? Is it possible that he didn’t know that the fire department required the additional employees? If he knew about the new hires, then why did he promise to reduce the taxation rate instead of leveling with us about his plans to raise the tax rate again, (and again).

On the question of a medical university, you know the old saying "where there is smoke there is fire"? In the case of the medical university, there is no smoke, not even a wisp. There is absolutely no news out of Queens Park that this is ever going to happen. (Conversely we get lots of news about the Vaughan Hospital). Under the current economic and political conditions, it seems pretty certain that no new funding is coming from the provincial government at this time.

On the matter of Shared Digital Infrastructure and Smart Commute, the Mayor demonstrates a lack of promise in both these matters. When researching Shared Digital Infrastructure (see http://www.newmarketchamber.ca/Strategic_Initiatives and www.sdiproject.ca) there can be no doubt that there are a lot a catch-phrases in play (such as "intelligent", "collaboration", "digitization", and "partnership" to name but a few). Strip away the catch phrases and there isn’t much left to explain what all the excitement is about. The Canada’s Economic Action Plan provided $2,102,456 towards digitizing library media (which I assume is the scanning of back issues of the Era newspaper), with another $514,711 worth of funding coming from other sources (one supposes that means the Newmarket ratepayers through taxes and fees paid to the Town, the Library and Newmarket Hydro). There is some mumbo-jumbo about guest speakers for the Chamber of Commerce but it is hard to discern what we actually got in return for our $2.6 million investment. From what I read, I am afraid there is very little here for Newmarket residents. Maybe we should have used that money to build a new library or re-furbish the Hollingsworth Arena instead?