Re-Elect Steve Pelkman, Councillor Ward 1

27/10/2026

Trying to put in words the feelings I experienced last night. 7 out of every 10 people who took the time to vote this past week marked my name on their ballot. Thank you all for your trust. That is truly a humbling result.

I would like to thank those who put their name out to be a candidate. It is a difficult thing to put yourself out there and I think all the candidates for Councillor in Ward 1 handled themselves well.

Specifically I would like to give a shout out to Wil Kampers who I ran into multiple times during the campaign. He always had a huge smile on his face and was clearly enjoying the door to door work. No expectations and with virtually no resources he got a respectable vote count. I found his joy to be infectious and a reminder of how fulfilling public service can be.

To Donna Pammer, Kevin Morrison, and Brad Richards I look forward to the next term with excitement to work with you and the other members of Council to keep moving our community forward and make people love where they live!

Congrats to Mayor Grantham and Deputy Mayor McGuire. Your leadership and work at the County is important and I have certainly come to enjoy working with you.

Again thank you all for your support it is such a privilege to serve this community that I love so much.

26/10/2026

19/10/2026

Voting starts today and it’s time for you to make your choice on how you want the future of Strathroy-Caradoc to look.

If you did not receive your voting card in the mail please read the statement below from
the Municipality.

🗳️ Haven’t received your Voter Information Letter?

The Municipality has received several returned Voter Information Letters due to missing or incorrect address information.

📬 If you haven’t received your letter by October 16, please contact the Voter Help Centre for assistance.

Your Voter Information Letter contains your PIN, which you’ll need to vote by telephone or internet.

📍 Voter Help Centre
Town Hall, 52 Frank Street, Lower Level, Strathroy

- October 19–23: 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
- October 24: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
- Election Day, October 26: 9 a.m. – 8 p.m.

The Voter Help Centre can assist with telephone/internet voting, voter list revisions and general election inquiries. Please bring your Voter Information Letter with your PIN if you wish to vote at the Centre.

Additional voting assistance locations:

📍 Mount Brydges Public Library
22501 Adelaide Road, Mount Brydges
📅 October 20 | 1–4 p.m.

📍 Melbourne Fire Station
21912 Melbourne Road, Melbourne
📅 October 23 | 1–4 p.m.

🗳️https://www.strathroy-caradoc.ca/city-hall/municipal-election/

18/10/2026

On Friday I had the pleasure of attending J.S. Buchanan school to attend a Q and A session by the grade 5 classes who are doing their civics lesson and conducting a mock election.

I probably answered 50 questions in 50 minutes while I was there and there were a lot great questions. Like what does it feel like to be a Councillor? What are going to do if you win or lose? What would be one thing you would add to the town if you could? What would you take away if you could?

These were all great questions and was probably the most fun thing I did on the campaign so far.

17/10/2026

Asset Management Plans - The rest of the story

A lot has been said in this election about Asset Management Plans, and there are some people implying we don’t have one, which is false, or that ours is also being ignored, which is also false. They are crying that we have a significant gap or shortfall in our funding for the Asset Management Plan, which is true, and that the sky is falling in because of it, which is false.

So, what is an Asset Management Plan? The concept of an asset management plan came out of the Province’s response to the Walkerton Inquiry. It basically says that replacing and maintaining your critical infrastructure shouldn’t be a political decision based on how it affects your tax rate, but more of a regular routine decision that already has funding for it. The Province wants Municipalities to start saving for replacing its assets at the same time as paying for them in the first place.

Seems like a logical stream of thought, so why do we have a shortfall? For decades the Municipal tax rate has been based on a Capital Budget (these are things we need to fix or replace right now, sometimes with debt sometimes not), and an Operating Budget (this is how much we need every year to operate). Divide that amount of money between all the residences and business and that is how much we tax each household (that is over simplifying it but good enough for you to understand how an Asset Management Plan affects the tax rate).

An Asset Management Plan says that ok so now that you have replaced or fix something, now how are you going to pay for it the next time it needs to be fixed or replaced? So effectively, since this is a relatively new process, we would be paying for things twice for a considerable amount of time.

Now put this into a personal perspective. You are buying yourself your first house and you have stretched your finances to do so, and then the bank comes along and says you need to pay double so that when your house needs to be replaced, you have already saved up enough money to rebuild it. I think for the vast amount of people that would be unreasonable to expect. Same for Municipalities. Imagine what that would do to the tax rate if we had to pay for everything twice, now. There is not a single municipality in the Province of Ontario who has a fully funded Asset Management Plan and it will be decades before there are.

A requirement for a municipality to have an Asset Management Plan has only been around since 2015 and the deadline to have one has been 2025. If you do not have an Asset Management Plan you will not likely be eligible for any Provincial or Federal Grants. Strathroy-Caradoc has one and just received $14 M dollars for a Sewage Plant Upgrade at the Strathroy Plant so clearly, we are in the good books of the Province.

So how does an Asset Management Plan work? It looks at each piece of infrastructure and asks, ‘How long should this last?’. Everything from Vehicles, Playground equipment, water and sewer pipes under the streets, the road surfaces, sidewalks, arenas and fire stations. The Municipality owns a lot of different types of stuff and each one has a lifespan attached to it and therefore a replacement date.

So why is the sky not falling in if it is not fully funded? Because an Asset Management Plan speaks to everything being replaced at a theoretical time not necessarily when they need to be. A perfect example is the Mt Brydges Arena. According to its building assessment, it would have fallen in on itself by now and been non-operational. But with good operators and some regular maintenance it is still functioning.

So don’t let all this doom and gloom stuff make you think our municipality is in horrible condition because it is not. Is there stuff needing to be done? Absolutely. Are we neglecting critical infrastructure? No, we are not. Like every other municipality in Ontario we are working towards the Goals of the Asset Management Plan because they do make sense.

But if we did follow the advice of the doom and gloomers and try to fully fund the Asset Management Plan now everyone who owns a house or a piece of property would be broke from the increase in taxes that follows to fund it.

16/10/2026

Well I now have all my fliers delivered covering the last few streets today. If you didn’t get one let me know and I will drop one off.

I really have to thank Lori who took two weeks off of work with me to do this. I promised her a street by street, house by house tour of Strathroy for her vacation.

But for those people who think how incredibly unromantic that may sound I also treated her to McDonald’s a few times, Harvey’s, Wendy’s and even once I splurged for Swiss Chalet.

She is a trooper and I definitely owe her for this.

16/10/2026

The Wright Place and Strathroy Hospice

I have listed these two items as important issues this next term of Council because of the potential impacts both projects have on the fabric of life for Strathroy-Caradoc.

Strathroy Hospice

Working with Seniors at or around their end-of-life experiences is an honour and sometimes you see things that break your heart. Now imagine your parent is at end of life and has been sent from Hospital to hospice, the nearest hospices are London, Exeter and Sarnia. All 40 or 50 minutes away. You go home for the night or have something you must take care of during the day, and you get the call, you better come now. What a horribly long drive to make under distress. Now imagine if the Strathroy Hospice is open and that drive is only 5-10 minutes away. It will often be the difference between to being there for you parent or not.

Also, many of the people who I work with are retired farmers and their connection to the land is very powerful. At planting and harvest time they are watching tractors plant and harvest the crop always willing to tell a story about their life. I firmly believe that they would wish the last moments of their life can be in the peaceful rural area surrounded by fields.

Having more hospice beds in the area will also relieve the stress on the hospitals that service the area as they often keep patients there because they can’t return to their homes.

I support the Strathroy Hospice.

The Wright Place

Years ago, a couple of studies being the Cultural Master Plan and the Downtown Master Plan both put some focus on the Downtown of Strathroy being an event space and thus a destination. We have actively worked towards that and it is why the markets and such are downtown. There was a time when there were many vacancies downtown which is not so much a problem now. Part of that is that where retailers once stood there are now restaurants. There is, by my count, 20 restaurants in downtown Strathroy.

One of my favourite actors is Jeff Daniels and he comes from Michigan. He built a theatre in his home town called the Purple Rose Theatre and it is about the same size as what The Wright Place is going to be. Chelsea Michigan (where the Purple Rose Theatre is) did a study in 2013 to determine the economic opportunity that a theatre presents in their downtown. The study found that the average attendee spent $24.60 (American) beyond the ticket price. Items listed within the $24.60 were things like paid parking, a meal or drinks after, etc.

Now let’s put that into today’s perspective and real life Strathroy. It is not too much of a stretch to say a good number of people attending a play or event may make an evening out of it and go out for dinner. With 20 places to eat within a 2-block radius its also not too difficult a stretch to say that most of that activity will happen in Downtown Strathroy. A dinner for two is probably close to $60 ($80-$100 with alcohol) at a sit-down restaurant with table service or $40 at a fast-food place. What a boon to our local economy The Wright Place could be. Great for business owners, great for servers and cooks (because they get tips) and great for an ‘experience’ in downtown Strathroy.

Many of these patrons will come from outside Strathroy-Caradoc, being friends or grand-parents, or maybe people who just love theatre and that influx of outside people will help keep businesses in downtown Strathroy healthy and vibrant.

Both projects deserve the support of Strathroy-Caradoc. They will both want or need some sort of funding from the Provincial or Federal Government and will not get it if the Municipality is not on board in some way. And that is why I think they will be issues for this Council to decide upon.

15/10/2026

What is Strathroy-Caradoc doing to resolve the housing shortage?

The Federal Government gave Strathroy-Caradoc $3.79 M dollars through a program called the HAF Fund (Housing Accelerator Fund). This program is to build homes quicker and cheaper in many different forms for both ownership and purpose-built rental units.

To qualify for this money, one of the things we had to do was identify any property that could be declared surplus and offer it up for housing and in that process create 19 affordable units.

After analyzing all the property we owned, the only property we decided we could declare surplus is the vacant lands on Francis St (behind McDonald’s). It was put up for tender and Council selected a bid that produces 25 affordable units for 40 years. 15 of those units will be Bachelor Units at $690/mth and 10 of those units will be 1-bedroom units at $823. The other 75 units will be at market rates. That means 100 new apartments in Strathroy within walking distance to shopping.

Ironically, I did not like using a tender process because what if we didn’t get any proposals we liked. I felt we would be forced to pick one that didn’t achieve anything we hoped it would, but sold a very valuable asset. But in the end, I was very happy with the pricing on the affordable units and the neighbours were happy with the design of the proposal.

The other major item that Strathroy-Caradoc is doing is making sure that all subdivision proposals include more than just single-family dwellings. We are forcing the developers to include a mix of high, medium and low density so there is a range of houses and apartments and hopefully a range of prices helping people to improve their housing situation.

At the moment there are many proposals that have been approved, but for one reason or another they have not moved forward.

12/10/2026

I would just like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and that at some point this weekend you got to see or talk to family.

09/10/2026

Housing – Over Intensification

Both the Province and Federal Government are introducing policies to incentivize development, but unfortunately not always in a good way. They are tying Municipal compliance to their policies to funding initiatives which implies that if we don’t do what they want, we won’t get funding for things like recreation centres, sewer upgrades, bridge replacements etc.

The Province of Ontario changed the Provincial Planning Statement to encourage intensification and now we are seeing applications for 6- or 10-unit apartment buildings on a lot for a single-family home. In one instance a 4-storey apartment building with 50 units and a two-story parking garage has been proposed on a single lot. Needless to say, this is quite alarming for anyone who is living near that lot.

We had just done a review of our current Master Plan, which is a guiding document to say, ‘This is how we want our neighbourhoods to look, what we will allow in what areas etc.. Shortly after we completed the review the province changed the rules and now, we have these proposlas which the public doesn’t understand and think we are promoting.

So, the question becomes if the Province is telling us to allow these kinds of things how do we protect our neighbourhoods from having them destroyed from a loss of privacy or too many cars on the streets?

One of the things missing from our zoning by-laws is set back provisions based on height of the building. We have setbacks but because we didn’t allow 6-plexes or 10-plexes in single family residential they just read 1.1 M from the property line (4 ft). However now that we are potentially having 30- and 40-foot walls being built so I think they need to be set back farther from the property line.

I have submitted a motion, still waiting for Council approval, to institute a sliding scale setback based on height so these bigger buildings are at least built on lots appropriate in size and don’t destroy someone else’s property value.

As well, we have at least 6 apartment buildings that have been approved on appropriate lots with minimal impact to other housing. If we allow these over-intensification projects, we are undercutting people who are trying to do it properly.

I will submit a second article in a few days on what the municipality is doing to increase and encourage housing variety, and therefore prices, both for rental and purchase.