HaltonHillsToday is profiling every candidate in the upcoming municipal election. Up next - candidates running for Ward 4 (south Georgetown).
Ward 4’s Blake Mandarino has several goals on his agenda in his bid for a council seat. He uses the acronym, ADAPT, as the guiding principle of his campaign.
“It stands for Awareness, Development, Accountability, People and Transit,” he said. “I think that council, in general, does not have the awareness that it needs.”
He added, “People need to know what's going on in the town and what our plans are. And I don't know if it's that council doesn't get the message out properly or people aren't properly engaged, but that needs to be solved.”
The father of two said he believes that development needs to be “sensible” and more “future-oriented.”
“You want to make sure you have enough land to do things right. You don't want to corner yourself into a box where you're just throwing development wherever you can just because you have to.”
Mandarino is looking forward to seeing many new faces on council with so many retirements because he feels “it brings accountability."
“There is going to be some change, and that is a good thing.”
He brought up concerns surrounding the sudden departure of former Halton Hills CAO Brent Marshall, around which many questions still hang in the air.
The candidate - who was once voted “most likely become a politician” in his grade 12 yearbook - sees himself as very people-oriented, comprising the “P” in his acronym. With a higher goal of fostering community, one of his objectives is to give people “access to the resources they need,” and he said he will do everything he can to help facilitate that.
In his capacity as assistant manager at The Superstore, he said he has seen people struggling, and more needs to be done to help them get jobs.
“Helping out my constituents is something that's very natural to me, and I would want to help them in any way I can.”
One of the ways he hopes to do that employs the last letter in his acronym, "T" for transit. He said he has personally observed people coming to work at his store from Brampton who are forced to take an inefficient route to do so.
“They're sitting on buses for over an hour” for a journey that would take far less time through more direct means, according to him. “It's not fair to people.”
