To The Editor,
This election campaign has been a great experience for me, whereby I traveled around Champlain Township, met so many wonderful citizens and listened to their views and concerns about our community. I truly believe that the genuine interaction between citizen and candidate was the most important part of this campaign.
Victory or defeat need not erase these conversations nor bury the ideas offered up by Champlain’s citizens to their candidates. Hopefully, the candidates not only listened but also made a point to take notes. Personally, I was surprised by all the enlightened opinions and positive ideas I heard along the campaign trail and feel that our newly elected council can easily embrace and action some of these during their first year in office.
As I spoke to many of Champlain’s francophones it became apparent that many felt it important that all municipally-funded community events require some form of bilingual signage or documentation. Others expressed their concerns about our two firefighting departments’ hesitation to call on each other for emergency support, preferring instead to call on other municipalities’ adjoining depts, thus increasing fire fighting costs to us tax payers.
It was impressive to discover how many outdoor enthusiasts live amongst us, and how they all felt that our region is more than ready to welcome an outdoor sporting event as a way of promoting physical fitness amongst citizens, highlighting our beautiful region, and attracting more regional tourism and the economic growth that comes with it.
Finally, I’d like to thank the citizens of Champlain for speaking up during this election campaign and for all that I learned from them.
Urbano Fumagalli
Champlain Township mayoralty candidate
