Jane Lesslie

PICTON WARD 1

Jane Lesslie believes that tax increases could be contained by using technology to improve and automate various processes within the County.

“This needs to be done throughout the municipality,” says the Picton candidate for Council. “Too many processes are weak, inefficient and too manual. And with better data and information we get better decisions.”

A chartered financial analyst who spent 24 years analyzing government finances, Ms. Lesslie says her worries about the County’s debt load cast a shadow over the proposed Wellington-to-Picton water pipeline project. “We can’t begin to contemplate $250 million plus in additional debt without knowing why we have had the enormous cost overruns we’ve seen in Wellington. I want an outside expert to come in, perhaps from Colliers, to conduct the project analysis. … And we need a serious debt sustainability study done before we spend the money.”

Having served on the County’s Audit Committee and Environmental Advisory Committee, she feels the biggest challenge facing Council for the next term is a wide range of financial issues. “Looking at the freight train of costs that will hit our infrastructure and businesses/ employers with climate change, we need to get our financial house in order. But to do that we also have to make a serious effort to bring new businesses to the County and extend our tourism season. Both of these will help us employ more people, raise household incomes and generate the tax revenues we need.”

The former board member of The County Foundation sees housing as an urgent problem but “I don’t want to see the County in the development business, particularly with our finances the way they are. The support we can provide is through targeting municipal-owned land at affordable housing, expedited approvals, supporting secondary suites and smaller rental units. Every proposal has to ask how many genuinely affordable homes will it produce, affordable to who, who carries the construction and operating risk, and how long will affordability be protected.”

She is opposed to strong mayor powers because they are “anti-democratic.”

Ms. Lesslie has a blunt solution to the problem of the County’s deteriorating roads. “I’d like to see the provincial roads that were downloaded in 1998 reuploaded to the province that ‘gave’ them to us,” she says. “Roads (and bridges) are the single largest part of our budget now at more than 27 per cent. In 2022 it was just over 23 per cent. We have more than 1,050 kilometres of roads and we have only 14 people per paved lane of road compared to 34 people in Quinte West, 65 in Belleville and 85 in Kingston.”

When asked why voters should mark their ballots for her, she replies: “The experience and knowledge of the County that I bring from my time on both the County’s Audit Committee and Environmental Advisory Committee and the insight beyond the numbers that I gained as a volunteer on the board of The County Foundation and my 24 years of career experience analyzing government finance are the key reasons you should vote for me.”