Ward 5: Candidate Dave Haacke explains his key issues

Northcrest Ward candidate Dave Haacke just missed the print deadline for Monday’s story looking at the Ward 5 race in the City of Peterborough. While his answers to our two questions didn’t appear in print, they were posted online Sunday with those of the other three candidates in the ward.

What is the key issue facing your ward?

The number one issue in Northcrest is traffic. This is not me saying it as a councillor but the taxpayers in Northcrest.

I have been to 80% of all of the doors in our ward and that is what they are saying.

When you have streets, Cumberland, Royal Drive, Hilliard, Bennett etc. that have volumes on them five and six times what they were built for this is a problem.

I have people that say to me at the door the people that say we don’t need the parkway don’t live in our ward and want them to spend a day in a lawn chair at any intersection watching the volume and speed of the traffic.

People that use Hospital Drive say “what a great road” are the same people that don’t want the Parkway. I know they don’t consider Hospital Drive the Parkway but it is, just renamed. The reality is we have to move the traffic that is moving north to south through the residential neighborhoods off those streets, not with a ring road to go around Peterborough but with a road designed to move traffic created in the city through the city.

What is the key issue facing the city? City wide issue? Growth.

Like It or not we, as a city, are growing and expanding . GTA expansion, 407, affordable housing, commutable to the GTA are all factors that are affecting Peterborough. If you are not growing you are dying, period. Peterborough is the new Brooklin or Barrie and we should embrace that and work it to the city’s advantage.

The next term of council will be about getting employment lands and the province will have to step in I suspect.

The city has for years tried to work a deal to expand with little success. The province stepped in and did this for Barrie years ago, it’s all well and good to ask that municipalities work it out amongst themselves but there comes a time where the province has to say “we have waited long enough” boom and force an amalgamation.

We need employment lands in order to meet the provincial requirements and we don’t have those lands today.

I am happy to compensate lost property taxes for a 10-year period but $50 million to $70 million? Not on my watch.