Sarnia councillor and mayoral candidate Nathan Colquhoun feels like it's the right time for him to run for mayor to address bigger picture things.
Colquhoun joined CHOK (103.9 FM/1070 AM) Thursday morning to answer calls and questions from listeners.
Colquhoun said when he ran for city council four years ago, the issues he brought to the table were limited mainly to small business.
"After sitting on council for four years there's a lot more issues that come into your purview. All of a sudden you're paying attention to every single aspect of the city, you're looking at these agendas with all these motions on it, and I was like you know what, I think my take on the bigger picture of Sarnia is something that's really resonating with a lot of residents."
Topics during the roughly hourlong discussion included flooding issues in the Coronation Park area, a lack of affordable housing, using debt to build the city and Colquhoun's attire during a memorable council meeting.
Colquhoun said the flooding issue is a complicated piece.
"When you have 400 homes flooding all of a sudden, it becomes this emotional thing where you want to help the people that have been hurt by this kind of thing," he said. "But we're also trying to focus on this larger picture and that wasn't even at the top of the list and those ones are failing and causing all these problems."
Colquhoun said the city can put more funds towards the flooding issue, something he and fellow councillor Mike Stark have been pushing for.
When it comes to building more homes in the area, Colquhoun believes it's important to build up and not out.
"You intensify the population within certain areas because then the infrastructure surrounding it can support that, and we've just seen kind of a mix. Since I've been on council, I've been really pushing hard for more apartment buildings. The more apartment buildings that we have, the more that we're growing up, the better it is in the long-term for the city."
Colquhoun said he believes the city could use debt a lot more thoughtfully and a lot more business-like in order to get some really important things done now.
"There's been a focus with our council for a long time to just say 'no debt, no debt, we're going to be a debt-free city,' but I just think that that's a harmful tool in the end to talk about debt like that," he said. "As a business owner, debt is a method to grow, and debt is a method to strengthen your business, and debt is a method that allows you to have access to credit so that you can get things done that you couldn't do otherwise."
Colquhoun was also asked why he wore a tank-top and fedora to a council meeting ahead of a motion on having to wear business attire to future meetings.
"All I was trying to do, and maybe it was immature at the time to think about it, but I was just trying to poke fun at the idea that we're in 2022 and we're still trying to dictate what people wear to work."
Colquhoun said the motion, which failed, was somewhat targeted at him because he typically just wears a collared shirt to council meetings.
Thursday morning's chat is available online at CHOK.com.
Incumbent Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley will join Stephanie Chaves on CHOK Monday, October 17 at 9 a.m. for another Chat with the Candidates.
-With files from Stephanie Chaves
