The province granted Windsor and dozens of other cities strong mayor powers in 2023.
Fred Francis officially launched his bid for mayor Wednesday with a pledge to kill the asset management tax, focus on building affordable homes over luxury condos and immediately ending the use of strong mayor powers.
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“I won’t rely on strong mayor powers to get my way,” said Francis, 45. “I will go back to how things used to be and how I grew up in city government, where you need consensus around that council table and you need the mayor and five other people to raise their hands and agree with you. That’s how you reach a compromise.”
The crowded race for mayor includes 11 candidates: Tristan Ty Morencie, Benjamin Danyluk, Tara Grayer, Aaron Day, Dylon Graves, Nick Kolasky, Kat Pasquach, Patrick Sutherland, Louis Vaupotic, incumbent Drew Dilkens and Francis.
After representing Ward 1 for 12 years, Francis announced in early August he is vying for the mayor’s seat in the Oct. 26 municipal election. He officially launched that run Wednesday night at his campaign office on Lauzon Parkway.
“We have a tremendous amount of momentum, the support has been overwhelming,” said Francis.
“The well wishes, the sign requests, the volunteer requests, the donations, everything’s been tremendous. And the one thing that’s been pretty evident in this last 30 days — and going into the kickoff now and after Labour Day — is people want change.”
Francis plans to release his entire platform after Labour Day. But he said a focus will be “affordability,” including building more homes that most people can buy.
“We don’t need more luxury condos at a million dollars a piece,” he said. “The focus needs to be where people can afford to live, where they can afford to work, where they can afford to raise their families. What we’re hearing, even with homelessness, addiction and all that, is there needs to be more affordable housing.”
Francis said he’ll also end the asset management tax, which the city is using to pay for a provincially mandated Asset Management Plan (AMP) to help maintain deteriorating roads, sewers and other infrastructure.
He was the only councillor to vote against a 2.1 per cent tax hike in 2020 that included an AMP levy. Francis was also the lone detractor last year when city council reaffirmed a 1.16 per cent AMP levy on top of regular property taxes.
He said Wednesday it is “completely irresponsible” during “an affordability crisis,” and he won’t push to bring it back or create other new tax levies.
“It’s essentially a double capital tax when people are already paying capital tax,” he said. “If we focused on the basics, if we didn’t spend money on a trolley project that was over budget, on an ice rink that was over budget, that’s money we could put towards priorities, and we wouldn’t have to create a new tax.”
