Mississauga Mayoral candidate Alvin Tedjo proposes residential property tax freeze

Mississauga residents heading to the polls in just over a month from now to elect a new mayor to replace Bonnie Crombie. And there are a number of issues at top of mind for voters. Things like taxes, housing, auto theft, transit expansion, just a few of them. And one of the people who hopes to tackle these issues while at the helm is Alvin Ted. Joe Merrill candidate and ward two counselor. Thank you for joining today. Thanks for having me. All right, let’s get right into it. Into your platform. So for you, you’ve proposed freezing residential taxes for two years. That’s right. And now the question will be how are you going to pay for all the services that come about then? Yeah, that’s incredibly important thing that we need to address in the City of Mississauga. Listen, I’ve been knocking on a lot of doors. I’ve lived in Mississauga my whole life and people are struggling now more than ever before, right. I talked to this woman the other day who comes from middle income family. They’ve got two parents who work and they got three kids and they’re in tears, basically saying how hard it is to afford to live in the city. And they never thought that they would be the type of people who need to use a food bank, yet they’re using one, right, Right. We need to do everything that we can to help people with affordability. And I don’t know why I’m the only councillor who’s out there who’s saying that we need to freeze taxes, but we absolutely need to freeze taxes. I can’t control the price of gasoline. I can’t control the price of groceries, but we can help people save several $100 a year by freezing their taxes. We also want to lower them for low income seniors so they can age in place and live in their own homes, and for small businesses so they can continue to thrive in the city of Mississauga, which makes it so great. We have a fully costed plan in terms of how we’re going to pay for it. We’re going to use 20% of the reserve. We’re going to build more housing, which is the next thing I want to talk about. And we’re going to make sure that we continue to grow the tax base in the City of Mississauga. So this is entirely appropriate. The rainy day fund is exactly for the types of moments that we have right now to help people. Let’s talk about housing, Let’s tackle that. And this is not just a Mississauga issue, GT issue, This is a Canadian issue, absolutely. So what are your plans? Because obviously when you do something at a municipal level, it does involve the cooperation potentially if the province of the feds as well. So how is that relationship working and what could be done in Mississauga? So a few things here. I mean, my family immigrated from the other side of the world. They came to Mississauga because they saw it as a place of opportunity. They could start a business, but most importantly, they could buy a home, right? And my wife and I chose Mississauga for the same reasons. We’re raising three kids and we saw this as a great neighborhood and it was also affordable. We could buy a home now. This was 15 years ago. Now, I can’t see anyone in this generation who can afford to buy anything in this city. We haven’t grown as a population for over 10 years. People are leaving, and so we need good jobs. We need good people who can work and live in this city. So we haven’t done nearly enough to prioritize affordable housing, Housing in general. We need all kinds of housing, more rental housing, more purpose built, more affordable, more supportive, more shelters. And that’s what I’ve been working on over the last couple years. You’re talking about the federal government. I work directly with the Minister of housing federally and provincially to get the fourplex motion passed in the city of Mississauga so that we could build more missing middle housing in our existing neighborhoods. And then to intensify focus on the intensification around transit corridors and our major transit station areas. Yeah, let’s talk about that. So if you want people to stay in Mississauga, they’ve got to be able to move around Mississauga and beyond because the municipalities of course connect. There’s a lot of construction going on right now. I drive hole around Mississauga. Some of it is positive in that things are happening, but not at the pace that many people would like to see it done for you. What is your goal? You know when you, you know flash that magic wand and you want to see transit going every which way, what do you see what you envision. So we need to fix a 40 year mistake where the City of Mississauga turned down an extension of the subway line from Kipling into the downtown core of Mississauga. We turned it down. We turned it down twice from the provincial government. We need to fix that mistake. Secondly, we need to build a rapid transit across the City of Mississauga. It just can’t be a NS connection along here, Ontario. It needs to be wrapped around Derry, around Aaron Mills, around Dixie, around Lakeshore so that people have reliable transit. We had hundreds of buses last year who have that closed door because it’s full, right? We need to hire more operators. We need to hire, We need to buy more buses. And then we need to build a rapid transit network that allows people to not have to sit and wait for the next bus, right? And they can just jump on and get to where they need to go because Mississauga is built on roads and highways. That’s why we’re successful. But right now you don’t have an option. You have to take your car. But we need safe, connected bike routes. We need a complete minimum viable network for rapid transit to really get people moving in the city. There was a debate last night, and there are more debates to come before that June 10th date. What do you hope that your Mississauga residents of voters will sit with when they think of Alvin Tejo? What do they? What do you want them to say? Yeah, I’m so committed to the city, right? I grew up here. This is my home. My parents are seniors. We need to find more ways to help seniors continue to live in the city and age in place. We need to help kids and young families find a place for themselves in this community. We need someone who’s got the vision and is interested in looking at the next 50 years. We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary as a city this year. We need to look at the next 50 years. What kind of city do we want to build? And we need to be cautious about what’s happening out there right now. People are, you know, making concerning comments around, you know, COVID restrictions, investigation isn’t the 15 minute cities. The transphobia that’s out there, the Islamophobia division. Yeah, anti-Semitism, there’s a lot of division right now. And we need I think a leader who understands what’s going on in politics right now can work with everyone in all levels of government, all political stripes, and find ways to bring people together. And there’s a few candidates out there right now who are really doing a lot of division and I don’t think that’s good for us. Alright, well, we’ve got about a month before everyone heads to the polls and a lot of work more needs to be done in advance of that. Alvin Tejo, appreciate the time. And if you want to take a look at this interview, you can go to our website, citynews.ca. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Best of luck. Thank you.