Building Waterloo Up

Jeyas loves Waterloo. Waterloo has all the ingredients to be the best place to live in Canada. To help Waterloo reach its full potential, we need to become a city that says “yes, and” instead of “no, but”.

Yes to building more housing, yes to protecting our most vulnerable residents, yes to affordability, yes to solving the climate crisis, and yes to a safe community.

Jeyas will focus on building Waterloo up. He will address our most pressing challenges head-on, with a commitment to service excellence and creating the most dynamic and inclusive city in Canada.

Building More and Better Housing

We need more of everything: supportive housing, affordable housing, attainable housing, and market rate housing.
Municipalities can help address affordable housing, but we cannot do it at the scale needed to permanently address it. The most important thing the city can do is make it easy for senior levels of government to build affordable housing: responsive permitting and approvals; allowing enough density to ensure projects are viable; flexible land use rules that make their projects easy to build; and reducing parking minimums. Our message to senior levels of government will be clear: we will make Waterloo the easiest city in Canada to partner with on affordable housing.
Waterloo has rolled out a number of positive initiatives to address affordable housing that Jeyas will prioritize by:
- Ensuring our renoviction bylaw is effective at protecting renters.
- Working with partners to speed up the development of over 1000 affordable homes at 2025 University Avenue East.
- Making the most of the land we purchased for affordable housing at 250 Lincoln Avenue.
The City of Edmonton has provided a blueprint for slowing market rate rent increases by expanding gentle density. We will examine expanded as-of-right permissions for missing middle housing within established neighbourhoods, in close consultation with residents.

Building Up Community and Neighbourhoods

Jeyas will ask council to reexamine the ban on backyard fires in Waterloo.
We will explore opening all library branches on Sundays. We live in a seven day a week society – it's time we had seven day a week community spaces across the city.
A thriving Uptown benefits everyone. We will make it easier for restaurants and bars to operate patios by reducing red tape, and expand the season by working collaboratively with all partners to keep our sidewalks activated longer.
Outdoor life doesn't end in the fall. We will make Waterloo a destination for winter activities in our public spaces.
Residents don't stop using parks after the summer ends. We will prioritize making municipal public washrooms available 365 days a year.
We will leverage the experience and knowledge of our REDI team to expand the involvement of equity deserving groups into our arts and culture events, and create more opportunities for them to feel included in city life.
We will pilot a new pedestrian street on Willis Way between the Uptown parking garage and King Street.
Work with the neighbourhoods team to identify areas that are underserved with city programming and make connections to activate enhance community belonging.
Work with school boards and religious congregations to identify and leverage underused third spaces to provide free places for community groups to meet and connect.

Building a Safe Community

Make the city's busiest trails safer with around the clock lighting.
Collaborate with Waterloo Regional Police Services to develop a long-term safety strategy for Uptown Waterloo that ensure residents and business patrons feel comfortable at all hours of the day.
Work with Regional Council to expand nighttime service on Grand River Transit to ensure that residents have safe modes of travel at all hours.

Building Safe Streets

Support a pilot project on banning right turns on red at high-risk intersections that fall within the City's jurisdiction.
Support the Region's expansion of multimodal walking and cycling paths alongside regional roads, and, where possible, facilitate the same on municipal roads.
Explore the feasibility of pedestrian scrambles at our busiest intersections in the University district, with a commitment to ensure it is done in consultation with persons with disabilities.
Advocate that the province increase funding for traffic calming near schools, and integrate it into the City's road reconstruction plans where feasible.
Maintain the City's reduction in speed limits on residential roads.
Support natural reductions in speed through environmental design (decreasing lane widths, daylighting intersections, etc.).

Building Solutions to Climate Change

Jeyas is committed to keeping the countryside line that protects our natural environment and farmland, and allows the city to grow more efficiently within established neighbourhoods.
Residents are concerned that the province might privatize our water supply. We will advocate to the province that our water supply remain under public control, and we will rebuild trust in our water management by prioritizing transparency and accountability in regional and municipal governance processes.
While it is important to acknowledge that the Region has identified appropriate long-term solutions for our water supply, we must appropriately balance growth with sustainability.
The City of Waterloo aims to be net zero corporate emissions by 2050. Jeyas will work with council to enable our staff to meet these goals.
We need to work collaboratively with partners like REEP Green Solutions and Sustainable Waterloo Region to help retrofit existing homes and build sustainable new ones.

Building Service Excellence

Build a concierge service that operates as a one-stop shop for residents and businesses navigating city processes. This service will be designed to help people at every step of the way in processes involving licenses, permits, and grants.
We need a culture of service that is proactive: every business gets at least one touchpoint from the city a year. We will celebrate our businesses throughout the year and champion them in the community.

Building a More Affordable City

The current structure for how municipalities are funded in Ontario is not sustainable. Jeyas will work with colleagues across the sector to advocate that the province create a new deal for cities that resolves these issues, while respecting local democracy.
Residents across the city are dealing with significant increases in the cost of living. We will balance protecting core services and infrastructure needs with finding ways to hold the line on tax increases.