Sudbury Ward 2: Eric Benoit on Taxes, Roads & Keeping the Momentum Going

(...) hello everyone. I'm Eric here from Love the North and we've got another candidate in the studio. We have Eric Benoit from Ward 2. Eric, good to see you. Thanks for having me. No problem. So first question, why are you running for city council? I feel like I've been doing it for the last two and a half years. Yeah. And I just want to continue the work that I've been doing in the community and love this stuff that's been happening. And I want to keep it going. Keep the momentum going for it. Keep it going. Okay. Ward 2,(...) what geographic area does it cover? So basically covers from the big nickel all the way up to near and center. Okay. So yes. So the communities of Copper Cliff, Live Lean Dot and Whitefish, Beaver Lake, Waters, it's a whole big area, 50 kilometers wide. Okay. I think it's one of the bigger, bigger areas. Second biggest I believe. Okay. Okay.

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When you're door knocking, what are you hearing from the residents? It's a bit of a mixture there. Some are still happy with how things have been going and then some are not happy with waste and how much things are lost in taxes going up and(...) roads and that sort of thing. And even though we're working towards fixing those problems, it's, you know, it's a work in progress. So people are still frustrated and that's kind of what we'll look for is going in and explaining what we're doing and that sort of thing. Keep it going. Yeah. I know you mentioned tax, property taxes. That seems to be a(...) red button on everyone's desk. What's your position on the property taxes? Well, I mean, they're going up. It's not, they're not great, but I know personally from the two budgets I've been part of what the city's been able to control. We've been able to keep it under the rate of inflation by making those changes and trying to restructure things and keep the costs down. Unfortunately, there's some things that are outside of our control, like outside boards, police, fire, some of those things are collectively bargained or a little difficult for us to play around with. But what we can control, we've been able to keep it below inflation. So, okay. So inflation is kind of like the benchmark? Well, that's, that's kind of what I'm shooting for is if everything costs 3% more, if we can keep the tax increase below that, then at least, you know, while everything's getting more expensive, at least we're getting less, you know, more expensive at a slower rate. Okay.

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Is, I know you mentioned roads, roads and infrastructure. Yeah.

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That's a big one. Everyone, everyone that's come through so far, you know, roads and infrastructure, but what does roads and, like to me roads means(...) a smooth road that isn't going to, you know, tear the vehicle apart.

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You know, if you look at some of the Panache Lake road, beyond Island if you want to get specific, you need a, you almost need a Hummer. Yeah. Okay. To go down. Like it's just rough. It's rough. And I, I, I drove down it the other day and I've, I've seen, I've seen worse. It's definitely not great, but,(...) you know, it's, it's definitely more wavy than it is potwolly, which is a little bit different, but yeah, it's, there's a lot of roads, we got a lot of roads and a lot of work that needs to be done. And yes, it's typical there. You know, going down that rabbit hole, when I was a kid, I'd roller blade down that road. Yeah. Okay. I did just go, I'd, I'd weave on one side to the other, depending on traffic. You can't do that now. No, not, not at all. It's too rough about for a service you roller blade on for sure. Oh yeah. Uh, safer communities. Um, a lot of people don't like to go downtown. Yeah. I know downtown's not your area, uh, but the safer communities, there was another resident actually, uh, in New Sudbury that, uh, had someone come to their back patio window patio door, try to get in a couple of weeks later, someone was peak booing into the basement. Uh, how is the safety out in your ward? Well, it's, it's generally pretty good. I mean, there's always the odd, you know, exception to that sort of thing where somebody will wander by, but it's been like that since I was a kid. Yeah. You know, when I grew up there, there was, there was the occasional time where something would happen and, you know, just there, what it wasn't, uh, all over social media every time it did happen. True. True. Somebody, I(...) hear a lot about like all these kids vandalizing and these kids threw eggs at this,(...) kids. Well, I would have nice, well, kids threw, kids threw eggs at things too. It's just, it wasn't a big community thing every time it happened. It's, it's just one of those, those things that the world we live in, there's a lot more eyes on stuff and everything, uh, gets, uh, there's no hiding any of the stuff anymore. Everything's happening faster. Exactly. Or so it seems,(...) um, homelessness and drug use in the open panhandlers. I know there's signs up at the intersections. Uh, what, what's the, uh, what's the council or what's your position on, on things, because there's, there's blatantly a sign that says no panhandling yet. They're still right there. I don't see anyone coming to clear them away. I know we've heard the police do try to move them along when, when they're able to, when they're there and they see them, they move along, you're not allowed to be here, but you know, I wish it was kind of dealt with more, but, uh, cause it is a safety issue. They could hit my traffic, but I mean, the thing, it's a very complicated issue, the homelessness and whatnot. You got to treat people with respect and understanding and understand that these are people's children. They're brothers, sisters, children that are, that are struggling here. So trying to offer them the opportunity to turn their lives around is something that we're really focused on, to give them that chance to, to keep them safe until they can make the decision to, to, to, to turn that life around. Affordable housing, affordable housing. Yeah.(...) Everyone, uh,(...) everything's getting more expensive. I don't know if it's getting just more expensive in this city or if it's more expensive in other cities as well across the North, but affordable housing, uh, from, from your point of view, being in the council for the, you know, the last term, what do, what's the city working towards for that? Oh, we're doing a whole bunch of affordable housing. We've got hundreds of affordable housing units going on. And on top of that, the, we're trying to remove a lot of that red tape. But before, when I, when I ran before, there was a lot of talk of there's nobody wants to build in Sudbury. Things don't want to happen in Sudbury. They're moving their shoes into those somewhere else. Yeah. Well, we've been trying to remove that red tape and try to encourage people here. And you're seeing that we're growing, we're getting more and more permits every year to build housing. We're more and more businesses are coming to Sudbury. So a lot of it is trying to encourage that growth because at the end of the day, yeah, a hundred affordable apartments is great, but every house is an affordable house in a way. If you build a million dollar home, then that's somebody who's going to buy that million dollar home is somebody who's not going to buy the $400,000 home. And it's going to kind of trickle down a little bit to we have such low vacancy in the city. I think it's like one or 2%(...) vacancy where we're looking at a 5% is what a healthy city would be at. So there's just not enough housing stock available at any price range. So you have these people who are just fighting over anything and you know, you may not be able to, you may not want that one bedroom apartment, but if it's the only thing that's available, that's what people are having to choose from. So there's options there by trying to encourage more development and more housing, that's what we're doing to try and move that along. Yeah. Because even, you know, why would anyone buy a million dollar house when all you need is a 350, $400,000 house, like for affordable housing? The problem too, there is that what should be a $100,000 house is now a $400,000. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you know what I mean? Like everything's kind of moved in that way where, you know, there, there is, you know, there's a bit of an issue there where you're just buying whatever you can find. It's not necessarily what you, what you would like. I used to, I used to sell real estate back in the day. And there was, I had some clients who were looking for a camp. Yeah. They wanted to camp a few years ago and we're going into camps that had no water and no sewer, they listed for $50,000(...) and they'd sell for almost $200,000. Cause somebody was planning to live in a year out. Really? Even though it had no water and sewer currently set up there, I will figure that out because that was the only way they were going to be able to afford a $200,000 homes if they bought a camp, it really shouldn't be more than $50,000.

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But there's just such high demand because people don't have to live here. Yeah. In the North you mean? Yeah. And specifically in Sudbury for the most part. Okay. That's why our team in horses. We have a lot of good jobs. We have a lot of things here, but people, people want to live here. And that's what's driving up this thing is if nobody wanted to live here, then you know, houses would be super cheap because nobody would want to buy them and it would all sort itself out. But because people want to live here, there's a high demand and there's just not enough supply. Yeah. The invisible hand and economic terms would take care of that. Exactly.

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Um, you know, building controls, when people come, I know you said that you're getting more building permits and all this stuff. I(...) red tape, building controls, red tape, the building inspector comes out and inspects it, okay, do this. That's changed. Then someone else comes out. Oh no, you can't do that. You have to do this.(...) What's up with that? Well, we're trying to sort out with changes and things to try and make it so that when somebody does submit their permit in the first place, issues are flagged immediately instead of being missed and then they can be sorted out before work starts and they have to be gone back and changed around. But like, it's one of those things that like personally, me and myself, I hate permit systems. I, I'd love to be able to do whatever I want to my property, but I also understand the reason that those things exist because now you have somebody who's buying a house where some craziest things were done without permits, they're not done properly, and now there's all these issues going forward. I understand the reasoning for it. It's just, it drives me a little bit crazy where it's like, I want to just do something on my property and I have to get permission and pay money for this. It just drives me crazy, but it is kind of where we're at where people have abused a bit of the system too much and it's gone the wrong way. And you see it a lot where there was stuff that was done previously that was not done properly and now it's an issue. So we're trying to balance the, you know, making sure things are done right, but without slowing things down and getting in the way.(...) Um,(...) the arena downtown, I know they're working on it. They're doing, they're doing what they have to.

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Where are you on this? You know, it's going to inflate our taxes probably even more. There's probably going to be cost overruns due to various things. Uh, do we really need a new arena? Everyone, everyone has their own opinion. Exactly. Where are you on this? So I always say that my, my, my preferred solution to the downtown arena was to build it 10 years ago. Yeah. It should have been done. Unfortunately, all the delays and all the things have gotten us to the point where we are now. The engineering report that came out, one of the things that first thing that came out when I got, when I joined city council was the decision on whether or not to fix the old arena or build a new arena. Those are the two options. We were, there wasn't other, any options. The other options are either no arena, new arena, fix, old arena, the old arena. The engineering reports were horrible for it. Like the thing I'm concerned it might not last five years. Okay. So it needs a significant investment to stay standing. Yeah. And when you looked at it, the costs were almost the same of fixing up the old arena versus building a new one right next to it. But when you're ever, you're fixing up something, there's a lot more unknown in there. If you look at say the Elliott Lake area, when that thing was falling down, they had new issues. They got the craft hockey, they'll money to try and fix it up. There was supposed to be a couple of million dollars to fix it. It's over $20 million.

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Anything in the years and years to do it, because every time they opened up a wall, they found new issues. Yeah. So our options really were no arena. So we have no community arena, no, no big concert venue, no place where our OHL team to play. Fix up the old arena, which probably was going to cost more. And we would never get the true, like ability to change it to what, where it fits more than just a nice hockey arena. The accessibility wouldn't be any better. It would not be designed for concerts and that sort of thing versus the new event center right next door to it. Now we're able to customize everything. We're able to make it so that it's good for concerts and it's more accessibility and it fits the mold that we're looking for. And it's at a more predictable price. I know a lot of people talk about the cost overruns and that sort of thing. But if you look back at the original report, the cost was $120 million.(...) Back when it first came out? When we decided on it a couple of years ago, $120 million,(...) plus a bunch of contingencies. And that's where we came to the $200 million range. So we've already accounted for cost overruns, increases the price of things in part, in part of that $200 million thing. So essentially we're starting with what was 120, 130 million dollar arena. And we said, we're going to do it for 200 million. And as far as we've been told so far, we've asked many times, it's still on pace to be done for 200 million dollars. Who did you ask or who are they asking? The contractors, they generally, the, uh, everybody from the, uh, the planning thing of it. So their arena is going to be say to $200 million. That's what they're saying still. That's still the, the word from the contractors from the budgeting and all that sort of thing. And on top of that, they've already purchased the steel. We've already purchased the concrete. So all these things that we're worried about the price going up with the world, we've already purchased these things. We've already handed out contracts for a lot of this work at a set price. So if the price goes up now, it's that doesn't matter. We already have.(...) For 200 million. 200 million. That's that's the, that's the current plan.(...) I don't know anything about the arena, but it seems reasonable. If that's, you know, where things can stay. And the, and the thing is that there's, there's also a little bit of a wiggle room in this sort of thing where it does come down to it where it's, okay, here's 200 million. And we might go over if we do this, this little thing, and then we have to make a decision, okay, is adding an extra escalator worth going over the 200 million for is adding this worth going over the 200 million for. We're still shooting for the $200 million budget, but it's a, you know, maybe there's some nice to haves that we could, we could consider later on, or we can cut them out and save the $200 million budget. Okay. Something that we'll get to decide on when it comes to it. As it is right now, 200 million from what we've, what we've been to it. So last question is, uh, why should do the constituents in your area? Why should they vote for you? Oh, I feel like the last couple of years I've really shown that I've been there to advocate for the community. I've helped with things like the likely ski hill. I've worked with all over community groups to make sure the low and winter carnival goes forward. I've worked with the, and the group that was trying to figure out what to do with the meat bird money and how to invest that and with the great project that could be happening at the Anderson farm. I've been working with a lot of these groups already. So I have these relationships and I want to kind of keep this momentum going as we go into another term. And I just want to keep that. The Anderson farm. Okay. This would be the last question.(...) I see that there's going to build a sauna. Yeah.

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Why(...) do we need it? Well, so it was one of those things that it was, it was identified through a walkthrough of public consultation. Yeah. Because I think there was, and it's something that's common all over the world. A public sauna? Yeah. Just not(...) here. Europe, big thing. That's our thing. There's health benefits related to the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, sauna and the heat therapy and that sort of thing. And we have a large finished community in the area. In fact, the Anderson farm at one point did have sauna in there. And it's kind of keeping with that, trying to tie that in there and having this amenity where there's going to be the ability to warm up in the sauna and have this, this use for it with the splash area to cool down and then all that sort of thing. So there's a lot of benefits to it. It was something that was identified as a neat feature that nobody else had. So is this, is this going to be a year round thing? Yeah. Yeah. For this round. Uh, the top of the plan is that there during the summer, there'll be the paved trail with lights that people will roller blade bike on that sort of thing. And in the winter they'll be flooded. So it'll be a skating path that you can go around with lights. And there's even talk of maybe doing like a Christmas where different places you'll decorate by the lights along the path. So you have like a skating path through the lights as you, as you go through. And it's, yeah, it's a really cool design and the food trucks. And it's going to be a phenomenal, phenomenal thing year round for everybody to enjoy. You know, when MeatBert was open, we'd always go there and it was great. Um, is there ever going to be a pool in Lively? It doesn't make sense with having Coppercliff and Gatchill 10 bits away. Yeah. Down the street. It doesn't make sense to add another pool pool there. Okay. Maybe if there was a point where Lively's population grew with, with what we're doing with the infrastructure, there's going to be an opportunity there. And also there's a demand for some sort of water park or something a little different, water related. Maybe there's an opportunity there for somebody private to come in and make sure it makes sense. Yeah. As it is right now, we're not going to build a pool five minutes away from, five, 10 minutes away from another pool. Yeah. Fair point. That makes sense. Eric Benoit, Ward 2. Thanks for coming

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