Ali Shah

The running list

What else is on the list, as it comes up.

Three pillars can't hold everything. This is the rest: things residents have raised at the door, in messages, and at the fairs, added as they come in. Each one says what council actually controls and the first move I'd make. Some of these aren't council's call, and where that's true, it says so.

• Added Sept 2026

  The hospital expansion

  The new emergency department, imaging and Bruce County's first MRI are largely funded, and council has already pledged $600,000 a year toward $2.4 million. I'd keep that. The part that's ours is people: a bigger emergency department only helps if we can staff it, and what loses recruits in a municipality our size is housing. Build a housing pool for incoming doctors, nurses and MRI staff with partners, the way the two locum houses were, so it never sits on the levy.

  Council's lane: recruitment, housing, and the ask for operating dollars

• Added Sept 2026 · Updated Oct 2026

  The new high school

  $57.7 million is approved, up from $26.5 million in 2019, because costs rose while everyone waited. The Board has a site under agreement on 15.71 acres; it hasn't publicly named the property, and I won't. The County provisionally approved the severance in May 2026, with conditions, and most of what's left runs through this municipality: a development agreement, a cost-sharing agreement for the road extension and stormwater, built at the landowners' cost before any school opens, an archaeological assessment with Saugeen Ojibway Nation engagement, and the municipality's written confirmation to the County that its conditions are met. Then the Board's site plan application lands on our desk. So our gates are real: name one reviewer, publish a turnaround, confirm the water and sewer in writing, and never let the part that's ours be the reason for another year. Updated October 2026: this item first said "no severance"; the file was further along than the public record showed, and the County's provisional approval is dated May 20, 2026.

  Council's lane: the development agreement, servicing, and site plan approval

• Added Sept 2026

  Backyard composters

  Ontario's waste regulation says a municipality our size should make home composters available to residents at cost or less. Chatham-Kent sells them for $20, Kenora for $10. A household that composts cuts its bag volume by a fifth or more, which is $20 to $30 a year in tags, so the composter pays for itself in the first year. This is the cheapest thing on this page.

  Council's lane: fully. A program, a price, and a pickup day

• Added Sept 2026 · Updated Oct 2026

  Highway 21 speed limits and signals

  Highway 21 is a provincial highway through this municipality, so council can't lower the limit or install a light on its own. What council can do is ask properly, with collision data and pedestrian counts attached, and the proof that it works is already on the road: after council's requests going back to 2023, the Ministry approved a Community Safety Zone on Highway 21 at the Tiverton public school, higher fines around the clock once the signs are uncovered, and the Russell Street intersection work is substantially complete. The next number is the collision history for the stretch inside this municipality, by year and location, which the Ministry keeps but doesn't publish by highway. I've asked the Ministry for it, and it goes up here when it arrives, before anyone, me included, names the fix.

  Province decides. Council builds the case and files the request

• Added Sept 2026

  Consultants we don't act on

  A study that sits on a shelf is the most expensive kind. Before a consultant is hired, the motion should say which decision the report is for and when council will make it. No decision attached, no study. Where a report already exists, act on it or say in public why not, before commissioning the next one.

  Council's lane: fully. It's a rule about how we spend

• Added Sept 2026

  Getting around: taxis and ride-hailing

  Getting to a shift or an appointment without a car is hard here. The vehicle-for-hire bylaw is council's, and it decides whether Uber, a local operator, or both can run. First step is to read what ours currently allows, then ask who's willing to operate and what hours they'd need to make it work.

  Council's lane: the bylaw. Someone still has to run the cars

• Added Sept 2026

  Native gardens and naturalized yards

  We converted our lawn to clover and planted thirty native trees around a small yard, and the bees found them before the neighbours did. Nobody should get a bylaw notice for feeding pollinators. The fix is ours: review the property standards and boulevard rules so naturalized native gardens are clearly allowed, with the noxious weed rules still enforced. If a bylaw notice has ever landed on your pollinator garden, I want to hear about it. Real cases make better bylaws than hypotheticals.

  Council's lane: fully. It's our bylaw to fix

• Added Sept 2026

  Invasive species in our parks and on our trails

  The 2025 addendum to our asset management plan added a natural assets chapter, an inventory of the wetlands, woodlots and meadows the Municipality owns, and it lists a comprehensive invasive species program as a future measure. No date, no dollar figure yet. Ask staff for both, and build the program around the volunteer groups who already know where the phragmites are. The knowledge exists in this municipality. It just isn't organized or funded yet.

  Council's lane: the plan already names it. It needs a date and a dollar

• Added Sept 2026

  The canopy after the ash borer

  The emerald ash borer took a generation of trees, and replanting is one of the cheapest good things a municipality buys. Annual tree health checks sit in that same asset plan as another future measure. The bigger idea: grow our own. Wellington County has run a municipal tree nursery for twenty years, planted with students and volunteers, and gives the trees away free. First move is to cost that model for Kincardine, fed by compost from our own yard waste. One loop: yard waste to compost, compost to seedlings, seedlings to streets.

  Council's lane: parks, partnerships, and the costing. Start with the costing

• Added Sept 2026

  Wetlands at the planning table

  Our asset plan now maps the natural assets the Municipality itself owns, including wetland pockets sitting quietly in municipal parks. Provincial rules protect the significant ones, and the conservation authority reviews development that touches the rest. The councillor's part is simpler than it sounds: no vote on a planning decision near a wetland or woodlot until the environmental study and the conservation authority's comments are on the public record. Protection starts with refusing to decide without the information.

  Shared lane: The rules are provincial and County. The homework before the vote is ours

• Added Sept 2026

  Trails, counted like roads

  The 2025 addendum brought natural assets into the same book as roads and pipes: trails, street trees, woodlots, wetlands. That's the right call, and it should carry through to the budget, because deferred maintenance costs twice no matter what it's deferred on. Trails connect our communities for people, and along their edges for birds and butterflies too. Keep trails and their green corridors in the asset plan with a condition rating and a maintenance line, the same as any road.

  Council's lane: fully. They're ours to keep up

• Added Sept 2026

  Data centres

  The Province is writing the rules for data centres right now, and public comments close September 12. I read the draft and sent in seven recommendations, including closed-loop cooling instead of our water, a noise standard written for rural quiet, waste heat going into greenhouses, and a council resolution on the public record before anything connects. The full submission is here, and after a local resident flagged a gap, I sent a supplementary submission adding an eighth recommendation on farmland. That one is here. The local piece, which the Municipality has since confirmed to me in writing: our 2025 zoning by-law defines a data processing centre and already permits it in four zones, including the Business Park, and below the Province's line the only approval needed is a staff-level site plan, with no public notice. So the readiness rules are ours to set, and the time to discuss them in public is before an application arrives, not after.

  Council's lane: the zoning underneath the Province's playbook

• Added mid-Sept 2026

  The airport, with real numbers

  The Municipal Airport costs the tax levy about $216,000 a year, a four-year average from the March 2025 staff report, which works out to roughly 0.85% of the levy. Some want it closed, some want it grown, and both arguments usually arrive without the numbers attached. Before we argue, we should all be looking at the same figures, so mine are right here, and the employment-lands question that comes with them is answered in the platform.

  Council's lane: fully. It's our asset and our levy line

• Added mid-Sept 2026

  Benches and accessible parking downtown

  This came up in the first week of listening, so I drove Queen Street and counted: eight accessible parking spots, one or two benches, and a few of the blue lounging chairs. Parking is better than the complaints suggest, which sharpens the real questions. Are the spots where people with limited mobility actually need to land, because an accessible spot two blocks from your destination isn't one. And is a bench or two enough for a whole main street, if you walk with a cane or shop with kids in tow. Mobility is an all-ages issue. I've asked the Municipality in writing how accessible parking was laid out in the street reconstruction, and benches remain the kind of small, visible fix a service club or business partnership could deliver without touching the levy.

  Council's lane: streetscape standards, and a partnership for the benches

• Added mid-Sept 2026

  More ways to downsize without leaving the municipality

  Not everyone wants to move into an apartment, and too often that's the only option after the family house. Land-lease communities and smaller-footprint homes keep retirees here among their people, and every downsize frees up a family home in a municipality with zero rental vacancy. This one came straight from the listening tour, and it's now part of how I think about the housing mix.

  Council's lane: zoning, servicing, and welcoming the applications

• Added mid-Sept 2026

  Contract discipline

  Residents keep asking a fair question: what happens when a project runs late or over budget? Our purchasing policy covers who approves what, but is silent on payment terms, performance security and penalties, which live in contract templates that aren't published. I've asked staff in writing what our standard terms include. The principles I'd push for come from managing construction projects myself: payments tied to completed work, clear timelines with consequences, and a start-by date wherever the municipality services land for development.

  Council's lane: the purchasing policy is council's to strengthen

• Added mid-Sept 2026

  Speed on Queen Street

  The most-named street in week one of listening. Stop signs won't fix it, they're designed to assign right-of-way, not slow traffic, and drivers speed up between them to make up time. The tools that actually work are radar boards, better crossings, and street design. First move: ask staff for the speed data on Queen and the options that fit a street that still has to flow. First move: ask staff for the speed data on Queen and the options that fit a street that still has to flow. A safe crossing at the hospital came up by message, and it belongs in the same conversation.

  Council's lane: fully. It's our street

• Added mid-Sept 2026

  Farms and the rural concessions

  At-large means the whole municipality, not just the streets with sidewalks, and farming is a serious part of the economy here. Some of this file I've already acted on: when a resident flagged farmland in the Province's draft data centre rules, I filed the supplementary recommendation above asking for real protection for agricultural land. The concession roads live in the same asset plan and the same funding gap as every street in town, so built once, built right applies to gravel as much as asphalt. I've also been asking staff questions in writing, and the first answers are in: the Municipality maintains 62 municipal drains under the Drainage Act through a contracted Drainage Superintendent, additional residential units are not charged development charges, and our zoning by-law already permits them in both residential and agricultural zones within the normal lot rules. What a unit actually costs all-in still depends on the property, so I'm working through the fee schedule next, because slow permits and surprise fees hit a farm operation the same way they hit everyone else, just with worse timing. If you farm, tell me what I've missed. I'd rather hear your list than guess at it.

  Council's lane: rural roads and drains, the zoning homework, and hearing farmers before the vote, not after

• Added Oct 2026

  Tiverton's community centre

  Tiverton has been asking for this for more than a decade, and in October the room asked again. I won't promise a building from a stage. Here is what's real instead: this year's budget already carries $100,000 for public sessions and construction-ready drawings on the recreation concepts the ad-hoc committee has been working on for the Davidson Centre and the Tiverton Sports Centre, pending council direction, and calls that work critical for grant applications. What I committed to in Tiverton, and repeat here: a resident-led scope, sized to what the budget can carry, built so it can grow, and costed in public with Tiverton at the table from the first meeting. Ontario's sport and recreation fund closes its intake on December 22 and pays up to half of a municipal build. The business case should be ready for that date.

  Council's lane: the scope, the costing and the grant application. The scope starts in Tiverton

• Added Oct 2026

  The lagoon, and the smell

  The lagoons are our sewage plant, not something beside it, and this summer odour was the single biggest reason people filed a water or sewer service request with the municipality. Credit where it's due: since September 8 staff have been running both blowers full time with a nitrate treatment for the odour, posting weekly updates, and reporting results slowly improving, with options for 2027 to come. Underneath the smell is sludge that has been building for years, and this year's budget starts the clean-out of Cell 1 over three years. What I'd add is the part residents keep asking for: a published, cell-by-cell desludging schedule and the pilot's results in plain language, so nobody is running on rumours, and the engineering done once on a 25-year horizon, because this plant's capacity is what decides whether we can say yes to housing.

  Council's lane: fully. It's our plant, our budget, and our schedule to publish

• Added Oct 2026

  A bus you can plan around

  For the first time, this municipality is on the map of a regional bus plan. The draft four-county transit study puts us on Route 3, Kincardine to Collingwood along Highways 21 and 26 through Tiverton, Port Elgin and Owen Sound: four round trips a day, Monday to Saturday, about $10 to Port Elgin and $25 to Owen Sound, with on-demand pickups within 17 kilometres of a stop run through SMART, the service we already fund. The four county councils decide in early 2027, and if all four say yes the plan's start date is July 2027. Nobody on a municipal council can promise a route, and I won't. What a councillor here can do is support the plan in public, ask what the enhanced-service item in this year's budget has actually bought, line up our taxi by-law with the regional one when it comes, and keep the ledger public: fares cover about a quarter of the running cost, the Province's start-up share tapers to nothing by 2030, and the counties carry the rest.

  Shared lane: the counties decide. Council's part is SMART's funding, the taxi by-law, and the ledger

• Added Oct 2026

  Rental housing for the people who already work here

  Zero per cent rental vacancy since 2016 isn't a statistic to the nurse, the apprentice or the cook who is already here and can't find a place. Council doesn't build apartments, but in September it set a target I'd adopt as the shared one: Project 160, 160 below-market rental and ownership homes at $1,088 to $1,740 a month, with a plan to allow four units as of right on serviced lots and a public dashboard so you can count. My part is making it visible and fast: the four-unit permission done early in the term, the dashboard published quarterly in plain language, and the extra sewer charge on a basement or backyard unit, $231.78 next year, put back in front of council if the engineering doesn't justify it. Additional units already pay no development charges here, which is the quietest good news on this page.

  Council's lane: zoning, servicing, the dashboard and the fees. The target is council's own; the job is to hit it in the open

• Added Oct 2026

  Grocery and errand money leaving the municipality

  Two grocery stores for 12,268 of us and roughly 14,100 in summer, and a lot of Saturday errands that end in Port Elgin. Council can't conjure a store, and I'm not running against the ones we have; expanding what exists counts as much as attracting something new. What council does control is the incentive and the land. The 2024 Community Improvement Plan already contains a development charge incentive of up to 50 per cent that was never offered as an intake this year. My ask: cost it, cap it, put a time limit and a public price tag on it, and open it to any grocer, including the stores already here. If the math doesn't clear, say so in public and move on.

  Council's lane: the incentive and the land. The store is somebody else's decision

• Added Oct 2026

  The reuse area, and recycling for businesses

  Two things people miss at the Waste Management Centre, and both came up on the garbage post. The reuse area, which some still call the Armow Mall, is gone, and I don't know why, so I won't guess. What I've promised is a costed look at bringing one back, designed from the lesson the volunteers taught me: an unattended drop-off turns into a garbage can fast, so any return is indoors, staffed, on set hours, with the people who ran the last one at the table. And since January, household recycling is the producers' program at the curb, which left shops and restaurants using the Centre's depot on a membership and a per-kilogram fee set in our own fee by-law. That setup and those rates get a public review, with the numbers, and a shared cardboard baling program for downtown gets costed before anyone promises it.

  Council's lane: the fee by-law and the Centre's design. The volunteers' lane: telling us how it actually ran

• Added Oct 2026

  Getting the bag to the curb in winter

  A one-bag household that can carry its own garbage in July may not manage the snowbank in February. The collection contract that expires December 31 is where this gets decided: assisted pickup for people who can't get a bag to the curb, a documented medical and diaper exemption, and a hardship provision for big households, each priced in the open as an option before anyone signs. Not promised, priced. If the number is good, it's an easy yes; if it isn't, you'll see why.

  Council's lane: the contract. The price goes up before the vote, not after

• Added Oct 2026

  Gary Street: the 21 acres

  On the October 14 agenda, in the consent package, staff reported a negotiated purchase and sale agreement for about 21 developable acres known as the Gary Street lands, to be rezoned for the Business Park with some institutional uses, with a public meeting expected in December, in front of the next council. Credit to staff and council for moving on employment land; the County's own analysis says we may need more of it. What the report doesn't print is the price, the servicing cost, who pays, and how the land would be sold or leased. The last time this municipality serviced business park land, the debt is still being paid at $576,117 a year through 2029. Those four numbers belong in public before the rezoning, and I'll ask for them whether I'm on council or in the gallery.

  Council's lane: fully. The numbers in public before the rezoning

• Added Oct 2026

  What happened to the free bag tags

  Three different versions of the story reached me in one week: when the free tags started, why, and when they stopped. I'm not going to repeat any of them until I've read the minutes and the old budgets, because that is the whole point of this page. The record gets pulled and published either way, with what the tags bring in each year beside it, a number the budget doesn't print as its own line.

  Council's lane: the record is public. Somebody just has to read it

Something that belongs here and isn't? hello@voteshah.ca. If it's council's to fix, it goes on the list. If it isn't, I'll tell you whose it is.