Growing up and coming home
I grew up in Stratford, studied Anthropology and returned in the late 1990s to open a business. Nearly three decades later, my working life is still centred downtown.
That has given me a long view of the city: tourism seasons that changed, businesses that adapted, buildings that needed investment, employees building careers and families, and a downtown that works best when visitors and residents both have reasons to be there year-round.
The real economy
Operating Pazzo and Café Bouffon has meant living with payroll, debt, renovation, procurement, staffing, regulation, seasonality and changing consumer behaviour. Plans have to survive contact with costs and consequences.
That experience shapes the questions I ask at City Hall: what does a project really cost, who carries the risk, what happens if assumptions change, and what will the City still be able to afford afterward?
Public service
I was elected to Stratford City Council in 2022. I currently serve as vice-chair of the Finance and Labour Relations Sub-committee, where the mandate includes municipal finance, capital planning, purchasing, tax collection, labour relations and financial reporting from City-owned corporations.
I try to approach the job independently. That does not mean opposing everyone; it means listening, testing assumptions and being prepared to explain why I voted the way I did.
City of Stratford: Finance and Labour Relations Sub-committee →
Community
My life in Stratford has never been only business or politics. Over the years I have tried to support local sports, arts and social-housing organizations and the people who keep those institutions working.
Those organizations are part of the same question Council faces: what makes it possible for people of different ages and incomes to build a life here and remain connected to the city?
Looking forward
I am not running to preserve the past. Stratford is changing. Housing, infrastructure, tourism, technology, climate resilience and major public investments will shape the next generation of the city.
I am running for re-election because experience matters most when circumstances are changing—and because the decisions we make now should still make sense years from now.