ThoroldToday will be profiling every candidate in the upcoming municipal and school board elections on Oct. 24. Up next: Kieran Daniels.
Kieran Daniels, 41, has lived in Thorold all his life and he thinks the city needs to invest more in its own community.
“I think we need to take a step back and evaluate things,” says Daniels, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “The development is too much. We need to put the economic growth behind us because it’s starting to diminish the quality of life.”
Daniels decided to run for city council because he wants to be a part of the solution.
“I think myself, along with other people, are just fed up with government on every single level,” he says. “You can’t sit there and bitch about it on Facebook all the time. Eventually you have to go out and do something yourself because you’re not being heard.”
Fixing the issues in Thorold will take more than one term, according to Daniels.
“It’s a four term, five term process,” he says. “There’s going to be a lot of difficult choices that are coming up. Council has got to make a priority to maintain the integrity of the city. Existing infrastructure can’t handle what’s been going on. We need to focus on what we have, and repairing what we have, in stead of developing more things.”
Daniels brings up the example of Broderick Avenue which he says has been in a state of disrepair for as long as he can remember.
While he acknowledges that there needs to be some form of development in Thorold due to its growth, he thinks the city needs to invest more in its amenities.
“Right now we’re a city of houses with nothing in it,” says Daniels. “Everybody has to leave Thorold to go get what they need.”
Another sore point is the fact that the Thorold Jr. B Blackhawks left Thorold for Port Colborne.
“We have a brand new facility we’re paying for but it’s not ours so we can’t use it,” Daniels says. “They didn’t even build a dressing room for them. There’s something broken. I don’t know if it's the council, if it’s city hall, is it senior staff, is it people interfering with the city? I don’t know, but the only way I’m ever going to find out is if I actually do something about it, run and get in.”
Daniels says he could bring a lot of experience to city council. He points to his job as a CAD coordinator with Hatch, a consulting engineering firm.
“I bring multitudes of experience in different aspects of engineering,” he says. “I worked in urban planning and municipal development for 15 years. There’s no one else in council with that kind of experience. To have that in your city making decisions would be beneficial to everybody.”
If elected, Daniels would like to focus on the small things first, such as the implementation of a city-wide tree planting program and introducing a slow zone in residential neighbourhoods.
“There’s so many stop signs in Thorold you can’t even get to fifty by the time you go from one stop sign to another," he says. "Once you get inside Rolling Meadows do you really need to go 50 kilometres an hour? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Organizing more events in the downtown is also on Daniels’ agenda.
“We just redid it, we need to use it,” says Daniels. “Having more things like the car shows, a farmer’s market, utilizing the new park, the band stand—it doesn’t have to be Canada Day to have a party.”
Daniels was born and raised in Thorold. He says the city is near and dear to his heart and he just wants to make it a better place.
“I like my little city so I remained here,” he says. “I literally moved from my parents’ house on Ormond Street to the house I’m still in now on Queen Street 17 years later. I’m not going anywhere. I’m hoping that more people will see me run in this election and maybe other familiar faces that we know from the community will start running too.”
Ultimately, Daniels’ message to voters is clear: Let’s put people over profit.
“If we keep putting developers and real estate agents first, it’s only going to get worse,” he says. “We just have to be more responsible and make better decisions with tax payers’ money. We have to treat it like it’s ours.”
