THE CONVERSATION: Newcomer ready to go

BURKET: You grew up in St. Catharines?

BAXTER: I grew up in St. Catharines. My husband and I, we had our two children here and we moved out to British Columbia. We lived in British Columbia for eight years, and I started in the interior as the very first female custom inspector. That was quite a job. It was very interesting. I met some really different people. And at the same time, they had the very first RCMP female officers there at the time. I used to go out with them and patrol the lakes and things. It was an interesting time. I lived on the island as well as in the interior.

Vancouver Island?

On Vancouver Island, yes. I lived in Nanaimo and then we moved to Osoyoos, which is where I got hired by Canada Revenue Agency. I was a commercial clerk there. And then I applied and won the competition to become a custom inspector in Grand Forks, which covered Midway and Trail, and then I transferred here to the bridges. So I worked all three bridges doing commercial operations as well as immigration and customs. At the same time, I was doing courses in getting my accounting degrees. So then I applied and won the competition to become an auditor for Revenue Canada. Then there I did various jobs. I did income tax audits. I did GST audits, and then I wound up doing my last with excise duty audits. But in the meantime, I started the business with my husband here. I was just a background person, of course.

Fonthill Paint.

At that time it was Fonthill Paint and Paper, but now it's Fonthill Paint and Decor. We started that in '91 and '92. So I've done both spectrums. I've been in private industry as well as government. That's why I believe that background gives me the experience and the knowledge to hold the position of being mayor. I certainly know how to read financial statements. I mean, I've done small businesses. I've done large corporations. So it was an interesting time for sure. Met some wonderful people.

You'll often hear candidates say that a municipality or a government should be run like a business. Would you agree with that?

Not really, because you're not in it for profit. But you are in it though as making it responsible, fiscal responsibility, but you have to meet the community needs. So the bottom line is you don't try to get into debt, but you're not there to make a profit. It's there to accommodate the people that are paying. They are your employers, the taxpayers.

What changes have you seen since—let's go back to 2000. Have you seen many changes in town?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm like with a lot of the residents in the sense that I feel that we've gone too fast too quickly. I've heard a lot of people say that what they moved here for is no longer here, and they're very disappointed with what's been going on. And some people have actually said they're moving because of what's been going on, and I thought that's really sad. You come here because these were the things that you thought were here, and you count on your council to represent you. And then it just seemed a lot of people feel that the development has become priority to the council and the residents are just kind of "Okay. Yeah, let's—" kind of forgotten. That's how some people feel. And this is the kind of consensus that I've been getting from people. And myself personally, yeah, I feel we could have done things so much differently.

For example?

Well, like the community center. I do believe we needed a community center. I spent many a times at that old arena. It was cold. I was like, "Oh, we needed that." I would have never done it the way they did it. Never. I wouldn't. I would have suggested it to be done in a totally different fashion. I think a community center is for the community, not for a certain segregation. We needed to have looked at everything. Could we have housed our administration and our library all under one roof? If you go up to Markham, they put the library, the pool, and the arena all under one. And I thought, "Well, you know, that's not a bad idea because your costs and everything are all under one factor." If they'd done that, they could have sold the downtown buildings, sold the library, and then the people could have gone to the library and would've had a one-stop type of thing, right? It would have been an idea that I would have brought forward. So things like making it a little more appealing when you're coming down Highway 20. You've got the highway and then you've got the plaza almost sitting right on the highway by the sidewalk.

The new Food Basics plaza?

Yes.

You don't think it fairly oozes “small-town charm”?

No. I don't know why anybody thinks that bringing in four- or five-story buildings and putting plazas almost on the highway is going to keep the small-town feeling. We needed to have set that back a little further, brought some more greenery.

So what's your prime motivation for running?

I think my prime motivation was bringing the town back to the people. I tried to save the Timmsdale House, and there were many people on board. And I think the sad fact is a lot of people didn't realize what was happening until after. Even though it was in the paper, and I tried to contact as many people as possible. It wasn't until after it was torn down that all of a sudden people realized, "Wait a minute. What's happening to this town?" And then I went to the council meeting and I thought what had transpired— really I thought, "This is wrong."

What happened?

I put my statement forward, but I couldn't rebuttal anything that the agent representing the owners could say. I felt that the Mayor and the representative were on the same wavelength. There was no consideration. This was brought forward prior to it. I didn't feel that the Mayor and the council looked into the matter and thought, “What can we do here to kind of sit back and say, okay, this is really a milestone." How many people used to say, "Oh, Fonthill, that's where that big stone house is." There was a piece of legislation that allowed them to kind of sit back and think things out and find there were some other ways that they could have done this without encroaching on the owner's rights, right? It came out to be just one big joke. It was like no one even considered really what was happening. I think after that, and then just talking to people and seeing what's going around, I thought if I can make a small bit of difference, I really want to.

The week that it was demolished last year, we did a brief story and put up some photos. I think it got just over 10,000 hits online.

And yet I presented and I did a lot of research. I knew my stuff.

A lot of the comments were, "Oh, my God. I didn't know this was happening." "How could this happen?" People weren't aware.

You ran the original story on it because I brought it to you guys. And I went door-to-door. I had people send letters to the Mayor, anybody I could. But I was only one person, right? I did what I could.

But that brings up an interesting point. You hear a lot of complaints, particularly the last couple of years, about this council, and about Town staff, and gripes of all sorts, yet voter turnout and actual involvement maybe isn't as high as you would like.

Yes.

What's to be done there? How do you get people more engaged in civics and municipally aware?

It's a hard question because everybody is so busy with their lives. I know of myself for one, when I talk to people in the store or wherever, I always say, "Regardless of who you vote for, make sure you go and vote. Make sure because you're not going to make changes if you're not out there." I don't know. We advertise. It's on TV. There's municipal elections going all over, right? It's just not here. So the only way to do is word of mouth, talk to people. If you are interested, like I say to someone, make sure you tell someone else that you're talking to. You can't get changes if you're not out there to vote. If you don't like what's going on here, then you've got to get out there and put your voice to be heard.

Many Town employees, when they leave the Town's employment are routinely asked to sign nondisclosure agreements, known as NDAs. Would you favor, if you were elected, rescinding the prohibition against speaking to the press among these former employees so that they can speak to their experience working for the Town of Pelham?

Are you talking about going forward or you talking specifically to the ones that you were in the past?

The past.

So specifically in the past, there's so much unanswered questions regarding the past, and I think for the people they need to know. However, we have to take a look at how their contract is written so that we are not liable for anything because we don't want to have to start having court costs and lawyer fees and things like that. So in answer to that, if we can do it without incorporating any legal fees or privacy contracts, yes, I think the people, they really should be knowing what has happened and what's going on. In order to go forward, we have to learn from the past as well.

Given the expense of the new community center, there's been what some see as a rush to sell other Town assets in order to pay for it, including the old arena on Haist Street. There's been a movement to postpone that sale until a new council comes in and can take another look at it and decide what may or may not be the best course. Would you favor postponing the sale or letting it go ahead now?

Definitely postponing it. One of the things that we need to do is protect our environment. And we seem to be paving everything over. So we need to reevaluate and take a look at that and say, "Okay. What's best for us? Do we need the green space?” Certainly, I feel we do. You can see all around you that we're just becoming one big development. So I'm definitely in favor of postponing it and getting a better idea of what the residents want.

What sort of use would you see for the old arena building, or would you favor tearing it down and turning the whole place into a park?

It has a footprint already there of a building. With the new arena and the way it is and all the land around it is being used and developed for other purposes, I would like to see probably that—maybe going into more centralizing, maybe putting in tennis courts or pickleball courts where the old arena sits, paving that over and then make around it more of a park-like setting. We already have where the kids go and play soccer, and we have the old paddle tennis court. So we can't do things like that at the new arena because there's not enough land set aside for that. So that would be ideal, I think, to develop it more into a recreational center.

Some proponents of selling the arena and developing it say, "Well, you know, just down the street you've got Harold Black Park." What's wrong with having a park that's a couple blocks away? Isn't that enough?

That Harold Black Park is—yeah, it's there. But the town is growing and there's nothing there for seniors, and seniors don't just sit and watch television. We are an active group as well, and I think we need to have some things for them as well. A lot of them do lawn bowling. A lot of them do pickleball. It's a great activity for people because it's not as hard on you as, say, tennis, and it's a lot of fun. So it would be great for the Town to have something like that because where the new arenas are there's no land set aside for anything to do other than the walking track. Harold Black Park is great because they have all the soccer things there and they have the baseball thing there and some equipment for kids, but nothing for the older generation. So that would be one suggestion I could see, going and doing something like that.

Just a few weeks back we had Summerfest once again on Pelham Street. A number of merchants have remarked over the years that it's a disruption to their businesses, and they would prefer to see it occur somewhere else. Some were hoping that it might be moved, say, to the new community center site.

I can see their point, and I don't think that's a bad idea. You've got this new facility. Why not make use out of it? And then it's not that far away from the downtown area. So the people that are visiting the Summerfest, it's easy for them to spill over and wander through the downtown area, and it would be a boost for them for sure. Yeah, I can certainly see that.

The Town has come out with some pretty startling figures over the years as to how much revenue Summerfest allegedly brings in to local businesses. Over the course of the past four or five years, have you seen any uptick in business at the paint store as a result of Summerfest?

No, it actually decreases, right, because a lot of people say, "I'm out of here. I'm not going to be a part. I can't find parking. I can't do this." No, it hasn't affected the paint store business at all other than it's not as busy. It's actually decreased as far as we're concerned.

And among other business people you've talked to locally, do they have any impressions as to the effect on their business?

I haven't really talked to anybody else in regards to that. No, I can't answer that question because I haven't talked to anybody about it. But I know for ourselves that, yeah, it's dropped in business.

For about a year and a half, two years now, there's been increasing concern about the Town's finances. Would you favor a third-party, genuinely independent audit of Town books?

I think to give the residents a peace of mind, yes. I think people still question. They still feel very unsettled about everything that transpired. I, myself, have gone over the pages of the financials, our budget, and everything, and I have a lot of questions about it. Of course, that's what my background is. And just looking at how they recorded the expenses, I have a lot of questions. They just labeled it as general expenses, transportation expenses, health and wellness— there was $6 million for recreational health and wellness. And I'm going, "Okay. What's that all about?" That's a lot of money for a town of 17,000 people. It could be justified, but it kind of makes you think are things being buried in there that we don't know about. The other thing I looked at was the library costs. The revenue of $900-odd thousand dollars and yet the salaries were $750,000.

You're saying that the salary figures seemed too high? Because obviously, not every Town service is expected to make a profit. That's not the way municipalities work. You provide services for residents. But what stands out about the library for you?

Well, we have two libraries. $750,000 for salaries between the two libraries seemed an awful lot to me. One of the things I would say definitely do is do a program review of our administration. That is definitely something to look at. I mean, for a town of less than 20,000 people, we have a staff of 60, including the council and the mayor. So we need to take a look at what they're doing and what is needed. And as I just mentioned, the library. How is it that we have $750,000 in salaries for the two libraries?

Well, I have to say, if anyone's going to be on the Sunshine List, I don't have a problem with it being a CEO of a library, because at least he's bringing knowledge and education and information to people, versus someone else in the administration that’s basically a bureaucrat.

Well, that'd be true, but like I said before, when it comes to the salaries of that, I'd have to see who gets what and how they're being paid. And I mean the staffing there is limited. I don't know what the CEO makes in the library. And I'm not saying that he doesn't—

I think he's just over the Sunshine threshold of $100,000.

And I'm not saying that he doesn't deserve what he's getting. I'm just saying those could be areas—when I try to take a look at the administrative staff on the financial statements, as I was saying, if you look at the expenses, they're only categorized according to transportation, general expenses. So you have to go and break down and see. Where is all this money going? I know that transportation would be care of roads. Then why aren't some of these roads being fixed? And of course, we have to be very vigilant with the new community center. Now, the old community center, I'm sure must have cost a lot of money to heat and cool that place because it was very outdated. So hopefully this new center is far more economical when it comes to electricity and things like that.

Just in the last couple of weeks the issue of Airbnbs and home-hotels has come up. Council will meet on Monday. We're speaking on Saturday, so we don't know what's going to happen, but the meeting agenda has already come out. It includes a staff report that offers a range of examples of what other towns are doing to regulate or not to regulate Airbnb-type operations and what are called home-hotels. What's your take on all of this?

If you look under 20.1 of the General Commercial Bylaw, it states "tourist homes," and Airbnbs are tourist homes. They're short-term. They're meant for tourists to come in and stay in. So the bylaw is very specific. And if you look at the R1, R2, and R3 zoning definitions, those are residential. They say, "home accommodation." The people are not living in these [Airbnbs]. So it doesn't qualify as residential. Once it's under a corporation, it becomes a business. So that definitely takes it out of the just long-term rental or under a typical rental situation. So I'm definitely against it. It's right in the bylaws. Now, they may be looking to license it like a bed and breakfast so they say they can control it. That's not what the people want. They don't want transients. They don't want people coming in and out. I wouldn't want it, and I'm sure the CAO and the existing council members don't want it there beside them. We have these bylaws, and if the residents are happy with the bylaws, why do we need to change it? Why can't we enforce it? We should. You've got the Municipal Act and the Provincial Act, which allows us to impose fines when bylaws are not being adhered to. It's there. It's in black and white.

The Town has limited bylaw enforcement capability. Could you see adding a couple of enforcement officers to enforce this?

My motto is fiscal responsibility, meeting the community needs. So can we look at areas where our tax dollars are not needed so much and reallocating them to areas that are needed? If we can do that, definitely, we would need to have a bylaw officer. But what is there to do? All you need to do is look up who owns the homes, where those people live. They're not home accommodations. They're under a corporation name. Establish that the people aren't there and then we have the Provincial Acts to enforce it.

You mentioned town staff. What level of confidence do you have in the current CAO? Do you see him staying on after October?

Well, from I can hear from the public so far, no one seems to have much confidence in him. So I can't answer that question because I would like to know what he did in his job. I'm just one voice in the council, and I think the new council coming in, we will all take a good look at the situation and decide whether or not he's the right person for this town.

Interesting that you say that you're just one person on council because I think the current mayor sees his position—or at least many perceive that he sees his position—as much more of a leader of council. Councillor Accursi, when we spoke to him a couple weeks ago, sort of dialed that back a little bit and said that no, the mayor is really only one-sixth or one-seventh of any given council. It's only a tie-breaking vote. How do you perceive the mayor's role?

We're a team. And the people have elected their representatives from the area that they're at. A mayor is there not to lead but to ensure that we are all able to voice our opinion and to look at it and work together. The mayor is out there representing the whole town. It's not a question of,"I'm a leader, so what I say goes." It's just a question of we have to work together for the better of the community.

Something else that has come up recently is the issue of public transportation. We have the Pelham bus—it's hard to tell how well-used it is because of the tinted windows. But it does run on a regular schedule. Is that sufficient?

Probably at this particular point, again, we need to find out how often it's being used and what times it's being used. That being said, we need to go forward here. And my husband and I and my daughter we actually went— I've been touring the new center. What struck me was how many seniors are coming up and about. So they would be probably the biggest user of this transportation. If we're encouraging seniors to come to this area, we need to be able to provide for them.

At the community center?

Yes. And then there's condos going in at the corner of Merritt, I believe, and Rice. So these people going forward would probably use the transportation system more so than the families or the people that still would have cars. So I would not discontinue it because we are encouraging these seniors to move to this area. We need to provide for them. No, the community center is not geared for the seniors, I'll tell you that because my husband walked in and he just said, "What's here for me?" I said, "Well, they have a walking track."

How old is your husband?

He’s going to be 70. So he was like, "Okay." And my daughter, she just came in here and she said, "Okay. Is this what's—?" I said, “Yeah, this is it." I said we need to go forward on this, but that was my husband's first reaction. So for seniors, if we want to attract them to this area, which is what we seem to be gearing towards—and I think even the Mayor had made a comment about how many seniors had moved into this area—then we need to make sure that we've got facilities to help them, to give them the quality of life that they need.

Is there enough affordable housing here for seniors? We've heard from a fair number of older folks that as they consider either downsizing or going into assisted living they're not sure they can afford to stay here.

I don't know if there's really a solution because it's like this in every town, every municipality. I've seen it in Niagara Falls. I've seen it in St. Catharines. We as a government have no control over the builders and who owns these buildings and makes them apartments. Somebody was telling me that across the road here, they're paying three to four thousand dollars a month to live in one of those apartments. Well, do we have a control over that or any of these retirement homes? The government can't tell them how much to charge. So unless we take over the job of having government-subsidized housing is the only way we can ensure that they can afford to live there.

Since you mention it, the Town was involved in the creation of the Pelham Seniors Apartments on Pelham Town Square several years ago. The Town has no involvement there now, but the building itself does continue to receive upper-tier subsidies for a third or so of its tenants. Is that something that you're okay with? Government subsidies to help seniors pay rent?

For sure. For sure. Because these are the people that have contributed their lives and their earnings to our economy and to where we are today. They deserve to be able to have a quality of life as they get older. If this is something we can do, I would definitely look into it. I would definitely support it for sure.

There's been an increase in traffic along Highway 20, and pretty much everywhere in town. How do we cope with that? There are safety issues. You've got kids walking, you've got people on bicycles.

When the Ministry of Transportation had their meeting before they widened the highway, it was up at the fire hall, and I had gone to it, and I had spoken my concern to the person representing the Ministry of Transportation, and his words were, "Well, this is the way we're going to do it. There's nothing you can do about it." And I said to him, "Why are you making four lanes into a three-lane and two lanes going up a hill? We have trucks flying down here, and most of them shouldn't even be in this area. They're bypassing the QE weigh scales.” And he says, "Well, it's part of our projection, and this is what we're doing." He wouldn't answer me. He wouldn't do anything. Yet the Ministry of Transportation is responsible for our highways, and the Region is only responsible for the side roads, right? I mean, we do have traffic bylaws.

Highway 20 is a Regional road.

But it was the Ministry of Transportation who widened it to the four lanes, right? And they should be the ones to kind of ensure—I've seen the police officers up there, and they're there on a Sunday afternoon or a Sunday morning. They sit at corner of Timmsdale and Highway 20. And I'm thinking, "Okay. You catch the odd speeder. Why aren't you here Friday afternoon when the truckers are all barreling through trying to get home, going through stoplights?" I don't see them at that time. So this is something that we need to address with the Ministry of Transportation. How? That's something that you have to kind of talk with them. You have to research what we can do about it. We have schools along here. We have a retirement home. I've seen people up at Lookout trying to cross Highway 20. They're seniors, right? And these trucks are just booming right through, and they just totally disregard. Ninety percent of them can use the 406. And I guess one of the things that they could do is put a traffic circle in.

Would you call on the Niagara Police to assign an extra officer or a dedicated traffic unit to Pelham? You can't stop people from driving through the town, but you can enforce the traffic laws that exist. So how do you fund that? How do you approach that enforcement question?

I think it's back to looking at our finances, talking to the Niagara Regional Police or the Welland Detachment and seeing what we can do because it is a big concern. It is a very big concern the way the traffic is. And yes, we do have traffic bylaws and they should be adhered to. They are better-equipped as to how we can enforce it and what we can do to enforce it. And then we as a town council can then take a look at it and see what is needed in order to bring it through because I've almost been killed twice crossing Highway 20 right at the stoplight, right? I've got the walkway. And one thing is people off of Lookout, they'll turn left and they're not even looking —and I'm yelling at them. I'm thinking what about the little old lady in her wheelchair? She's trying to cross the street, right? I thought why don't they put a sign up there that says, "Look for pedestrians before you turn left." You know, Church Street [in downtown Fonthill] is another one here where a couple of times people are turning left because they see the green light and they think it's for them.

Let's talk about that stoplight. About a year ago, council had what some folks thought was a not-very-bright idea to make that a right-turn-only intersection. At the bottom of Church Hill you'd only be able to turn right. Coming out of the arches, you would only be able to turn right onto Pelham Street. In a way, that would solve traffic flow. However, at the considerable expense of convenience.

I don't think the light at the bottom of Church Hill really is helping anybody, to tell you the truth, and I've gone twice to the Town to complain about that because I almost got hit. I get very nervous. My grandchildren walk to the school there, and I said, "Don't take that way.” I don't like them walking on Highway 20 either, but of course the mother and father have instructed them you only cross where there's crossing guards. Everybody's in a hurry. They're wanting to get to where they're going and they turn left, right? So how can we do it? I don't know. Do you put stoplights where the arches are? But then if you do that, that'll back up traffic on people turning on to Highway 20. Unless they're programmed to be very quick so you can only quickly turn so that it keeps the traffic flowing. But now, a lot of people can bypass this and go straight down Port Robinson Road and come up Station Street to connect. So they can really bypass the town, right.

That was part of the proposal. Route traffic down College to Station, left on Station up to 20, left on 20, back to downtown. So you're going around Robin Hood's barn basically to come back to Pelham Street.

I don't think there's enough people that cross there at the corner of Church Hill and Pelham Street to warrant that kind of inconvenience. I mean, I do walk into town. I walk all over the place. Maybe we need to take a stat on that—a lot of times I push it and there isn't even a car in sight. So, yeah, it's something that definitely would look into; but I think you need a little bit more stats. I don't think I would make people have to turn right and not left.

We've covered this a little bit already, but if you were to name your top three priorities, what would they be for the next four years?

Fiscal responsibility, meeting the community needs. The other one is definitely I think a traffic flow issue is here as well. But the other major one is the development. We need to have sustainable development with meeting the town's needs. We live in a beautiful area, and it's imperative that we maintain it for future generations. So how do we go about doing it? We have to work together. That's the bottom line. Just not one person can do it. So I'm hoping with the new council that's going to be coming in, that they all have the same vision of maintaining what we have but building on it.

When you refer to development, do you mean less of it?

I mean sustainable development. I mean development that enhances what we have, not just go ahead and pave over everything.

What would be an example of sustainable development?

First of all, I don't think we need to build any more subdivisions out there. I think we need to control what we do have. We can't change the past. But we need to look at each individual and say, "Okay. Look at the architecture. Look at what's being put up. Who's building it?" Just things like that, and incorporating green space with development. Like I was saying about that plaza, we needed to put that back ten feet, put more trees in front that would absorb the gas and help the environment. We have to take a look at our infrastructure too. If you keep building and building and building, it's going to create more—we need more services. Look what's happening in Toronto when you have those flash floods. Our environment is changing. We have to think ahead. I mean, you can't stop growth, and you don't want to stop growth, but you can do it in a positive way.

We've heard from some people who are familiar with the public works department that we have a very aging vehicle fleet. There are bridges that are in fairly desperate need of repair and maintenance. It sounds like there's a long list of delayed and deferred expenses and basically zero cash to pay for them. How do you dig yourself out of that hole?

We have to find areas that don't need the cash flow as much and reallocate it to the necessities. Infrastructure is a necessity. And if we don't prepare ourselves for that, then we're going to be in trouble down the road. So if it means that we have to cut back in some areas at this time, then that's what we need to do.

Could you see raising property taxes?

I would like not to. I think we need to look at what we have first. I don't know about you, but my property taxes aren't low. That to me is always a last, last option. Let's take a look and see if we can make other areas work first.

So you're not saying, "Read my lips, no new taxes"?

No one can project anything, and I'm not going to make a comment that I can't fulfill.

Right. So maybe it's more,"Read my lips, there could be higher taxes"?

I would say I wouldn't do that only— if it's a question of we have to raise the taxes by $25 in order to build and make sure the infrastructure is in place, yeah. If it's reasonable, if it's acceptable, and needs to be done, yeah. I'm not going to say no, definitely no new taxes, because there's needs.

Is there anything about your personal style that distinguishes you, gives you an advantage over the other two candidates?

Each of the candidates have their strengths and their own ways. Gary Accursi has been on the municipal board. So he has the advantage of being in municipal politics. But I've been in politics for 32 years, maybe not at the municipal level but definitely in the federal level.

You're saying your work was political to some degree?

Certainly. In order to do my job, I had to act in a lot of ways, and I'm acting as an agent for the federal government. So when I'm out there, I'm representing them. I have to ensure their integrity. And when you go for competitions, there's a lot of politics involved. I've seen all of that, what you need to do in order to get here and to get there. I mean, every time I went out the door, it was politics because many people— if you're out there to audit their books, they're not happy to see you. But I would say the majority of the time I always had a very good rapport with the public. So as far as understanding myself, I think just who I am. I think just what I've done in my past and that I stand for the town, the municipality. I think that makes me who I am.

What was your reaction when Councillor Junkin resigned last year?

I had respect for the fact that he stood up in what he believed in. If he felt quitting was the only way that he could bring that matter to the front, then I respect him for that. But once he quits, he's no longer there as a representative for his constituents. So you got elected to do a job, but I mean he certainly brought the matter to the forefront about that. Could he have done it in another way without quitting? So again, I'm not too sure about that, but I do respect him for standing up for what he believed in.

Anything we haven't hit on? Anything you want to add?

I think we pretty well covered everything. I'm going to have some brochures. My daughter is working with me on that. I just feel that this whole area is a beautiful place to live. And I just feel that, like I said before, it's sad to hear people saying they're leaving because of what's been going on. ◆