Colleen Stewart

Two city-wide priorities, and how to achieve them

• Make Hamilton more affordable: cites residents selling homes or cutting back on food because of rising taxes and costs; says property taxes should go to essential municipal services (roads, sewers, parks, recreation, fire, police, ambulance), with zero-based budgeting where programs justify their funding.
• Restore public spaces and safety: points to neglect and visible suffering on city streets and a lack of visible policing; wants complete, safe communities.

Two changes to improve City services

• Accountability: wants someone clearly responsible for fixing problems (her example: a sinkhole that bounced between the roads and water departments, a months-long broken water meter, a derelict gas station and stalled construction sites).
• Collect measurable data to track how services perform (her example: no public data on e-scooter incidents).

Two changes to improve quality of life in Hamilton

• Affordability and restoring public spaces again, framed as quality of life; says families are leaving because they can’t afford to stay.
• Build complete communities: wants a Waterdown-area recreation centre located inside the community rather than across Highway 6, so families can get affordable city swimming lessons.

Two priorities for Ward 15

• Fix what’s broken: roads (e.g. potholes on Carlisle Road), plus a sinkhole and other unfinished repairs.
• Finish what’s been started: stalled construction sites abandoned for about 12 years and the derelict gas station at Dundas and Hamilton (vacant since 2010). Says she would achieve both by listening, learning City Hall’s workings and finding common ground with other councillors and the mayor, drawing on her communications-consulting background.

Three words for a four-year term (looking back from September 2030)

Listener, trustworthy, reliable.