Candidate pledges to fight for vulnerable

Ward 8 hopeful feels prosperity not filtering down to city’s working poor

Kathryn (Kat) MacDonell works midnights as a concierge at a seniors home and waits tables on weekends because, she says, her salary’s “at the poverty level.” She describes herself as working poor, and believes that if elected to city council, she can give a voice to the many people like herself in Windsor who feel the city ’s current prosperity has passed them by. “I plan on dedicating myself full time to this job, to improve the city and help the people,” says MacDonell, who recently registered to run in Ward 8, a seat considered wide open after 21-year council veteran Bill Marra announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. Ward 8’s seat on council is also being sought by 32-year-old Greg Lemay. The municipal election is Oct. 22. It’s the first time MacDonell, who said she’s over 50, has run for public office. Born in Windsor, she said she’s worked as a restaurant manager, a troubleshooter for restaurant chains and once owned two restaurants of her own. She went back to school for a business degree and worked as a nuclear medicine technologist in Michigan. But in recent years, she says she’s dropped down to lower-paid work, something that’s happened to many Windsorites. “You hear Windsor has low unemployment. I have to tell you, Windsor has very high underemployment,” she said, explaining that the city needs more betterpaid full-time jobs instead of parttime, casual and temporary work. “If you go to a job fair, you’ll see hundreds of people lined up to turn in resumes and those are minimum-wage jobs and even parttime jobs,” she said. “I don’t think the statistics show the reality.” If elected, she said she’d like to help the city’s most vulnerable. “Windsor has a great deal of poverty and I think there are steps we can take to help these people get on their feet,” she said, such as working to solve the problems of homelessness and addiction. She said her No. 1 priority would be making Windsor safe by addressing issues like dangerous intersections and people doing drugs in the downtown. She also wants more people to be able to buy their own homes. With real estate values rising, the dream of buying a home is moving further and further away for people earning minimum wage, she said.

“I recently purchased a house (in Ward 8) so I know first hand how difficult it is to afford a house in this city.”