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Inaugural Address

Each new term of Kitchener city council begins with the inaugural council meeting, when our newly elected officials are sworn in and officially begin representing their constituents for the next four years.

The mayor provides an inaugural address to set the tone for the term, outlining both challenges and opportunities council and the city will address together.

2010 Inaugural Address

Delivered by Mayor Carl Zehr

City of Kitchener

Dec. 6, 2010

Good evening and welcome to tonight's historic inaugural celebration, where you are witnessing, as your invitation read, "History in the Making".

Tonight seven new councillors and three returning councillors who are brimming with energy have taken their declarations of office. For the first time in our collective memories, Kitchener's council has a majority of new faces around the horseshoe.

I can tell you that because of this, I am excited to work together on behalf of the more than 230,000 citizens we will serve.

It is an honour to address you tonight as the mayor of Kitchener. I was humbled to again receive the trust and confidence of the people of Kitchener in the recent election. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to continue to serve as mayor.

Thanks also to all the candidates who participated in the municipal election. It takes courage and commitment to put your name on a ballot.

Once again, despite the excellent slate of candidates, our voter turnout remained too low, improving by only 3% over the 2006 results. Generally speaking, our citizens are very engaged in the life of our community, and I hope that in future elections, the turnout will be more reflective of this.

To the councillors who have just left this horseshoe, Christina Weylie, John Smola and Geoff Lorentz, thank you for your dedication, hard work and lengthy service on behalf of our citizens.

Congratulations and welcome to our new councillors - Scott Davey, Frank Etherington, Yvonne Fernandes, Dan Glenn-Graham, Bil Ioannidis, Zyg Janecki and Paul Singh.

Welcome back to our three returning councillors - Kelly Galloway, John Gazzola and Berry Vrbanovic.

From our initial discussions, I know all of you are looking forward to advancing issues of particular interest to you, as well as working collectively on behalf of our broader community.

In the words of the great industrialist, Henry Ford: "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." I look forward to achieving much success with you.

I would also like to warmly welcome all of our family members and friends to tonight's historic celebration. Your support and understanding are critical to our ability to serve as Mayor and Council.

Personally, I would like to once again thank my family and in particular my wife Sandy for your understanding of the demands of my position. Sandy, not only are you my strongest supporter, you are my best critic and trusted advisor.

Thank you all.

In preparing for tonight's ceremony, I reflected on my previous inaugural addresses. In particular, I reviewed the first address I gave as the newly minted mayor in 1997, when I was a little younger and a little less grey, but as enthusiastic and energetic as I am today.

In 1997, I said, and I quote, "It's really not the mayor's vision that counts at all: It's what OUR vision is - all the people. It's what we believe Kitchener is and can be. As mayor, it's my job to draw that vision out to bring it to life and to make us feel good about who we are and where we live."

I believe that this still holds true, and over the past 13 years, we have done exactly that.

In 1999, council launched the largest and most inclusive public engagement process in our city's history, as we set out to understand our community and our collective vision.

We started by defining our vision: "Together, we will build an innovative, caring and vibrant Kitchener with safe and thriving neighbourhoods."

Then you told us about your priorities for our community. You wanted to be engaged and show leadership in your community and you did that through your active participation. You wanted an improved quality of life with an energized downtown, a more diverse community with a variety of activities to pursue - learning, exploring new cultures and an active, vibrant arts, culture and leisure scene. You wanted new economic growth and employment opportunities and to attract new talent to our community. You wanted an increased focus on our environment with more trails, parks and cycling paths. And you wanted to take a leadership role with respect to environmental sustainability and to reducing our ecological footprint.

As I see it, as council moves forward, we need to respect our community's priorities and vision, and use them as the foundation on which to make our decisions.

This isn't about us as a council. It's about us as a community.

Over the next four years, challenges will present themselves. However, these priorities and vision give us the foundation and the focus needed to make important decisions about the future of our community. As a wise person once said, "We cannot control the wind, but we can adjust our sails."

While the worldwide economic turmoil of the past two years has been challenging for our community, Kitchener continued to move forward. True to our roots and our vision, we have thrived, seized new opportunities and welcomed innovation.

Think of the strategic opportunities that we have developed over the past few years to diversify our economy: the Health Sciences cluster, the digital media cluster in the Tannery including the Communitech Hub, Desire2Learn and Google, while continuing to support innovation in our vital manufacturing cluster with the creation of the Manufacturing Innovation Network.

Without a long term community vision, those investments would not have been possible. Coupled with the recently announced GO Train service, transit hub and a future LRT, these new investments are literally changing the face of our city and adding strength to our local economy that simply was not there before.

Our economic development strategy and our community's focus on investing in our downtown have been balanced with continued investments in our suburbs.

Over the past decade alone, we have built or upgraded the LEED GOLD certified Activa Sportsplex, Sportsworld Crossing Twin Pad; constructed or expanded community centres in the Chandler Mowat, Kingsdale, Victoria Hills, Williamsburg and Stanley Park neighbourhoods; developed a new fire station on Huron Road; continued to develop the Huron Natural Area; redeveloped McLennan Park and provided infrastructure, connected by parks and trails, to support our many new neighourhoods.

Truly, we have done a great deal across the breadth of our city for the benefit of all citizens. We have been strategic and have invested in a sustainable manner. We can all be proud of the fact that these investments were accomplished while maintaining one of the lowest property taxes of similar sized cities in the province.

While considering these significant investments, please also remember this fact: municipal governments deliver numerous services, programs and activities with only eight cents of every tax dollar collected by all orders of government.

Think about that. The community centres and arenas we and our children use, the workers who plow our roads, the firefighters who respond to emergencies, the trails we enjoy and the parks where we play plus many more services are provided using only eight cents of every tax dollar you and I pay.

Those who know me understand that I am passionate about the role municipalities play in the lives of our citizens.

We know that municipalities are the economic engine of our country. We also know that receiving just eight cents of a tax dollar is not a sustainable financial model for Kitchener or any other Canadian municipality.

This is why I believe that we need to work cooperatively with other orders of government to ensure that they acknowledge the need for change to the funding mechanisms for municipalities.

I will say tonight, as I have said before, in order to balance their budgets, the federal and provincial governments must not - as has been done in the past - download services and programs onto the backs of municipalities.

Municipalities are under-funded. There is no question about this.

But let me be clear.

Canadians cannot afford to pay significantly more in taxes. We need a new and innovative way to allocate existing taxes, be they income taxes, sales taxes or property taxes. However, until that mechanism is in place, we have a responsibility to create a sustainable budget to ensure the long term health of our community.

I would remind you of the hard lessons we learned in a previous era when decisions were made in municipalities across this province with short term thinking, rather than with the benefit of a long term vision.

As a council, I believe that we need to develop the will and the foresight to avoid making decisions that may benefit our citizens only in the short term, but which do not fit with our established long term strategic vision for our community. Such decisions often result in greater costs in the future.

As Mayor and as a community citizen, I realize that we have to balance the need for fiscal responsibility with our ethical, legal and societal responsibilities to our community. We will strive to fulfill those obligations remembering that despite the success of our community, many remain in need in Kitchener and across our region.

Therefore, we will work collectively to ensure that the decisions we are making are the right decisions, the best decisions, in the short term and the long term.

As the largest city in our region, I believe it is incumbent upon us - while always acting in the best interest of Kitchener citizens - to consider the interests of our neighbours as well. Kitchener is a community that strives to achieve a broad vision, one that looks beyond our municipal boundaries to do what's best for our entire region.

While I had hoped for a different result on the referendum question regarding discussions with the City of Waterloo, we will continue to work co-operatively with all our neighbours.

Again, specifically to you as councillors, after twenty-two rewarding years in municipal politics, I still enjoy the opportunity to serve and to represent our community. It is my hope that as we embark on this new council term together, you too will find satisfaction in serving the public and working with our community.

I look forward to working together with you on behalf of the citizens of Kitchener.

To select a quote from the City of Kitchener's Strategic Plan, "We will work together because success depends on all of us."

History in the making - it starts tonight.

Thank you for joining us as we celebrate together.

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