Interview with Mayor Jerry Acchione - Tuesday October 3rd

Tuesday, 3 October 2023 at 10:18

Woodstock Mayor Jerry Acchione announced on Heart FM this morning that he is willing to accept Strong Mayor powers so the city can access the Ford Government's Building Faster Fund.

WOODSTOCK - Woodstock Mayor Jerry Acchione is willing to accept Strong Mayor powers from the province in order to create more housing in the Friendly City.

He made the announcement on Heart FM this morning.

"I'm basically putting a Mayor's Report forward saying, I guess plainly yes. I am willing to sign this commitment for the 5,500 homes. So you're hearing it first here, that with that of course does come the Strong Mayor powers."

Acchione says this report is in response to a motion put forward by Councillor Kate Leatherbarrow, asking him if he's planning on using the Strong Mayor powers or not.

Using the powers, Acchione will be able to pass legislation that will help Woodstock add 5,500 new housing units by 2031 if he has support from one-third of City Council. The City would also have access to the province's $1.2-billion Building Faster Fund in order to do so.

Acchione says City Council has already been working towards creating more housing in the Friendly City, and the extra funds from the province would be a great help.

"At the end of the day, I feel like it's almost throwing money away and that is not fair to any taxpayer. There is a housing shortage, let's face it because it's clear. This is a collaborative thing with council, we've always agreed on this one, to put more housing in, build up, intensify, and everything else so we're doing this anyways."

Acchione is also planning to veto the powers back to the City whenever possible. He would also like to make it clear that this will have no effect on the upcoming budget because the meeting dates have already been finalized and he's going to sign a bylaw stating that he won't be making any changes to it.

This Thursday's City Council meeting will begin at 1:30 p.m. and you can find the agenda online here. You can also livestream the meeting on the City of Woodstock YouTube page.

During his interview with Dan and Marcie on Tuesday October 3rd, Mayor Acchione also talked about the latest Community Grant winners and last week's meeting about safe consumption sites. You can listen to the full interview below: