We've been blessed with making lots of new friends and rediscovering old ones. I’ve spent time speaking with residents about the issues that matter most to them. From what they think about the fairgrounds, exorbitant property taxes, protecting our lake, paid parking or not paid parking in town, abysmal water quality, water taking, wastewater planning, biosolid spreading, toxic fill remediation, development, Infrastructure or the lack of it's proper maintenance, mental health (including addiction) to protecting our rural character, charm and roots.

STRONG RURAL ROOTS

What makes me think I’m qualified to run for the Township of Scugog Ward 5 Councilor position? I like many of the residents of the Township of Scugog , have strong rural roots having grown up on a farm just east of Mono Mills, off Highway 9 (east of Orangeville). I was raised in a tight knit Irish Catholic rural community attending primary school at St. James Colgan, Ontario, Just west of Tottenham, where we were taught by the Sisters of St Joseph. Interestingly I commuted from the farm daily to High School in the west end of Toronto, where we were taught by the Jesuits and Sisters of St. Joseph at Michael Power St. Joseph HS. It was living on the farm where my strong work ethic and backbone were developed. I had the good fortune of attending school for grade 13 at the Canadian Junior College Overseas on the island of Carriacou, Grenada, West Indies. I took Scuba Diving, Marine Biology, Environmental Studies and Marine Geology on top of the standard Ontario High School curriculum. I got to dive in the Caribbean when the reefs were like underwater forests teeming with marine life. It was a truly unique educational experience. Being an adventurer in my youth, I spent 2 years post high school delivering custom made C&C Landfall 38's, Landfall 48's and Whitby 42's (all Canadian custom built sailboats) from Port Credit, Ontario down to the British Virgin Islands. I've survived a hurricane on the open ocean, which drove me to taking Business Computer Programming and launched my business consulting, High Technology and Telecommunications career.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER

I have a professional business background spanning 40+ years in management consulting, business consulting and both telecommunications and high technology sales working for some of either the largest (Lucent Technologies, EDS, Cisco Systems, Unitel, Symantec, IPsoft) and smallest (VoiceGenie, Lorus Technologies) leading-edge technology companies in North America. The last 20 years of my career were in the highly relevant AI, cyber security, document management and automated speech recognition spaces. Through my professional career I acquired extremely useful skills for driving the operational efficiency and effectiveness of both private and public sector organizations. For example I was on an 18 month project at Deloitte Consulting, where I had a pivotal role on the team sent to Ottawa to work in the Privy Council Office the objective being to drive costs out of operations of the Federal Government for their 2012 budget.

WHAT SKILLS DO WE REALLY WANT ON COUNCIL?

It is my belief based on my conversations with the public across Ward 5 and those 40 years of dealing with both private and public sector entities, what we need is a council made up of strong minded individuals who bring real world experience to the table, who are critical thinkers, collaborators, problem solvers and who are unafraid to push back when the unelected machinery of government try to dictate terms completely unacceptable to us. We don't need a council made up of individuals who have memorized the municipal act, that accomplishes nothing. We have a Clerk for questions regarding the municipal act and staff to execute what we determine to be the will of the people. We also must be certain we have no one on or running for council who is beholden to anyone working for the machinery of government, the job is to represent the constituents, period. We need change agents because its time to change the relationship constituents have with their local government and the relationship the Township of Scugog has with other levels of government. It’s time to get the public re-engaged at the municipal level. They have been quietly disengaging for decades. Voter turnout is the bellwether of the state of our representative democracy, and voter turnout has been abysmal in municipal elections across the country. Democracy on autopilot is not in the best interests of constituents.

INTEGRITY, TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY WITH TEETH

Everyone talks about integrity, transparency and accountability of elected officials (just check out the brochures) but few talk about how we give the constituents the power to hold their elected representatives directly accountable for their actions at any point in their term. My solution is recall. If a representative chooses to not act in the best interests of the constituents, then those constituents should have the power to remove them from office at any point in their term. If we can use electronic voting for electing representatives then we can use electronic voting to cost effectively remove them. We'll need to agree on the number of recall votes to remove a representative (65% of constituents of the ward or township for example), but unless we do something to give constituents teeth, we will be stuck with the status quo which leaves our elected representatives completely unaccountable to their constituents throughout their term.

IN CONCLUSION

I hope this helps the constituents of Ward 5 better understand my credentials for the job. As for me being in Port Perry for 16 months I have this to say. At the fair I introduced myself to Port Perry's favourite Mayor, Marilyn Pearce, President of the Historical Society. She told me to remind people that when she ran for council she had been living in Port Perry for 24 months. The Township of Scugog took a chance on her and she went on to two terms as councilor and two terms as mayor. She served the community well, as will I.

On October 26th please vote Stephen Kotyck for Ward 5!