HaltonHillsToday is profiling every candidate in the upcoming municipal election. Up next - candidates running for Ward 3 (north Georgetown).
If Ward 3 candidate Waldo Paquete has one passion, it's ensuring that the streets are safe for everyone. But don’t let that fool you into thinking he's a one-trick pony. He also cares about affordable housing and recreation - an ecosystem of beliefs he thinks will strengthen Halton Hills.
“I'm looking for a safer community,” he told HaltonHillsToday. “I would like to work with the council and local police services to help motorists reduce their speed.”
Part of that would require him to, as he says, streamline the Town’s processes to re-classify residential streets as 40 km/h roads. He would complement this with a “lenient warning system” for first-time-offenders. The idea, for him, is to create harmony and a sense of “we all live in this town together.”
Of particular concern to Paquete is the youth and families in the community. He sees that hustle and bustle of life adding to the stress of families and feels that council should do more to bring them together. He worries there are not enough venues to accomplish this in town and that residents, as well as the youth, are just “coming, living and going.”
He says the time is now to "work with council to encourage the Town and businesses to look at areas that we can enhance together as leisure places.”
One of the bigger reasons why he's so community-focused relates to what he views as a loss of youth locally.
“The kids have grown up, they’ve moved on. A lot of the kids don't really want to come back and live in Georgetown," he said. "So we need to bring that community back - that there's something for them to be here.”
He acknowledges there are plenty of staple recreational activities like festivals that bind the community together, but wants to do more.
Finally, affordable housing is on Paquete's priority list. He hopes to ease property taxes and look into co-operative housing ownership for seniors.
“These co-ops will be run in a way that they won't be inflated when they’re sold. So they're kind of controlled by the corporation, just like a condominium would be.”
Paquete ran for council in 2010, spurred on by his frustrations with traffic. He has lived in Halton Hills for over two decades with his wife and two children and works for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board.
