Mayor Kasenberg's Inaugural Address

Below is a copy of Mayor Todd Kasenberg's inaugural address as presented at the Inaugural Council Meeeting on Monday, November 21, 2022. 

To colleagues, family, friends, staff, media and our community. Welcome.

Awesome sauce.

Yes, that’s right, I said awesome sauce.

I first heard this expression from one of my sons a few years back. To this day, I’m not sure if that was an invention by him of some newfangled expression that, for my generation, was expressed as “Cool”. At least that is what I believe it means today, as I reflect on this unusual expression.

Through the pandemic period, some of us, faced with more time at home and even perhaps a dawning desire for more to do within our walls, turned to new hobbies. In my case – now past that “male menopause” that I noted in my inaugural speech 4 years ago – I took up the joys of more diverse cooking, curtailing pretty significantly my indulgence in fast food. I purchased an Instant Pot. And learned to expand my cooking repertoire from about 6 dishes to about 36.  In the process, I worked fairly hard – found new recipes, tried them, got introduced to new foods and food formats, experienced a few burn notices, joined a community of other Instant Pot users, and learned principles that make meals turn out fairly well. I’m even at the point now where I’ve crafted a few recipes of my own. I learned to be careful when releasing the pressure from the pot at the end of a cook cycle. And to make sure that the seal for the lid is properly seated. I have experienced a fairly reliable turnout of sauces that are just delightful. I’ve learned to make awesome sauce.

And as I enter my second term as mayor, I’ll tell you that some of the lessons of the Instant Pot are relevant to my expectations moving forward as mayor. Like my experience with the Instant Pot, my first several months of serving as Mayor, in those pre-pandemic days, were a great adventure, with occasional burn notices, and creating care to get a good seal. Getting the balance of activities and interests right, even knowing some of the places where the best recipes are stored, was a big part of my experience 36 months ago. Lots of ambitions and goals. A flurry of early activity with Mayor’s Task Forces and changes in bylaw enforcement and a gritty insistence that we seize every grant opportunity that was sniffed out.

Just about the time my so-called honeymoon as mayor came to a reasonable end, along came a pandemic. No mayor or Councillor that I know of signed up for a pandemic. Many wonderful people, during the recent election, bowed out from another term of elected office because of the demands and hostility that this period of human history have placed on elected officials.

I can tell you that it was a very uncertain time. We were fortunate to have a few things to rely on – our notions of community and protecting those most susceptible to morbidity and mortality outcomes. A remarkable cadre of public servants – staff – who were and are experts in both infectious disease handling and emergency management. A clear sense that we were going to learn as we progressed, even if some in society criticized the scientific method in a misguided belief that science, once pronounced, is fixed, and there’s no reason or right to change what we learn. A deep-seated passion to keep our businesses strong, and their willingness to pivot, to change rapidly, in the face of threat and mandate. And a commitment to keep the government closest to the people functioning appropriately and compassionately.

We exit the pandemic a grumpy people. I think we are a society in some ways quite fragmented by disagreements about what was too much or not enough, about individual rights and freedoms vs collective safety and security. We are now more aware of the ties which bind us through witness to those who have passed away too early from an infection that went after the vulnerable, leaving unexpectedly early holes in the fabrics of our lives. Even our commitment to volunteerism in community has been softened, likely at least in part to the fatigue that is manifested both as a sequela of COVID-19 infection and from the relentless exposure, so to speak, to our same four walls and all that charity at home. We’ve had to be relentless caregivers at home, so many are fatigued with asks to be caregivers in our community. Many have vaulted themselves into the experts’ chairs, without credential other than a few YouTube videos. It makes governance a pretty uncertain effort these days, and it is not all that surprising that politicians of any stripe have wrung their hands of making hard decisions because they are wrung out with angry armchair and keyboard warriors.

Compound this languishing with bad actors on the global stage, add the significant worry of climate change, and our very security of existence is threatened.

It could be a pretty bitter sauce.

But I’m before you today ready for my second mandate as mayor. While it was no easy first term, and our times have bred many who can’t rise above being critics, I find myself willing to point at and work towards a better world.

I was reminded, through Facebook memories, of a quote by Robert F. Kennedy, an American politician and brother of former US President John F. Kennedy:

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

I know that context is everything, and that quotation can inspire both sides of any debate. But I continue to want to act to improve the lot of others, my neighbours and friends in North Perth. And I pledge to be mindful of the lenses, the frames, through which I look so that I am fair, balanced, conscientious, and, to the extent possible, wise.

I am quite gratified to be surrounded by colleagues of good will on this Council, who also see our opportunity for creating some awesome sauce.

Four years ago, I stood before you with a series of interesting projects that I hoped would advance the quality of life and place of our community. Many of those have been started. Quite a few, and I say this gratefully, have come to fruition. And several remain ahead of us should we choose to be bold and brave. Some will die a deserved death for impracticality or irrelevance or wrong-headedness. So be it.

Let me spell out what I think will be key ingredients of our awesome sauce for the next 4 years.

First, we will be dealing with growth and renewal of our community. The stage was set last term of Council, and even slightly before that, with a commitment for the introduction of a new County of Perth Official Plan. This work has taken a lot of time, and a fundamental restructuring and increased investment in Planning services at the County had to be undertaken in order for it to progress meaningfully. I was privileged to be an active player in the decisions that have renewed that Planning Department, and to see it emerge and shape itself as a result of key decisions by mayors and CAOs across this County. Things are stabilizing. The workload remains immense. Our growth is a challenge in form and extent. Many have talked to me about infrastructure concerns with our rapid growth. Many object to various forms. A new Official Plan will frame many solutions for our future, and so I will do all within my power to see it brought forward, comprehensively discussed and assessed, and then finally passed. This will unleash needs to issue a new comprehensive Zoning Bylaw for North Perth. That too will be a lot of work that will dominate this Council of 2022.

We are in a weird time for Planning. I am concerned about recent provincial legislation that, to my eyes at least, further restricts municipal right to comment on and reject planning applications. This Council has a wisdom about such matters that should not be silenced or diverted unduly by those making decisions more relevant for the big cities. I believe we must continue to assert our influence over the form and extent of development.

That begins with protecting our agricultural lands with aggressive intent. We are a force of nature in North Perth. Our lands are some of the finest in Canada for a broad range of agriculture. Sacrificing more and more for residential and commercial growth is not in the long-term interest of this community or of the province. We must come to accept notions that we must increase density and build up as the primary method for future growth of North Perth.

This term of Council will also need to face an increasing array of decisions related to climate change. There are those amongst us in denial, and society’s general diminishment of expertise doesn’t help us in heeding warnings from the most qualified that we are on a collision course with a greatly changed world. A world threatened by more frequent weather emergencies, by changes in global temperature, by changes in air quality, and by decreasing availability of energy to fuel our at times beyond-reasonable needs. We will be called to do our part for the sustainability of the municipal corporation. And we will be called to do our part for the whole planet, which is troubled with climate injustice that at least in part comes from our consumerism.  We will soon hear and need to consider the call to electrify everything. And this will have impact on municipal operations, and prompt us to think differently, and maybe even assume some new duties.

I will be relentless in inviting this Council to put skin in the game when it comes to affordable housing. This is an issue about which there is enough talk. It’s dominated my first 4 years as mayor. The Premier made it fairly plain, at the August annual meeting of AMO, that this is an “all of government” matter, and indicated that municipalities must be the leaders amongst our three levels of government. Call it a download, or wisdom, we are in the hotseat, and traditional notions that affordable housing must be driven at higher levels of government are clearly no longer correct. We must now be ready to put shovels in the ground. We can’t expect the market to fully satisfy on these matters, although we have seen some progress in the market in just the last little bit, with our first project with intent for affordable in many years recently receiving first planning approvals. We need to do more. We need to be innovative. We must get in front of the province and ask for the money that comes with the download of responsibilities in these matter.

Homelessness amongst us is real. It is, to many eyes, shocking. Upper and lower tier governments are taking actions. We are connecting unsheltered individuals to supports. We will continue to work with our partners in Social Services to strive towards a community which addresses homelessness compassionately and using best theories and practices.

The last Council approved a first plan – which recommended action on affordable housing along three paths. In my eyes, it is a start. Council should expect to see some significant expenditures in this term, beginning with land contributions, use or leveraging of our borrowing power, and direct spend on staff to help us navigate this area of responsibility. We may need to sacrifice old dogma that this isn’t our arena – it clearly now is, and we need to do our part.

This Council is called to continue work to ensure that a Traffic and Transportation Master Plan is delivered and acted upon. It will be a dominant theme in our 4 years of serving together. Public expectation is very high that we build a truck route and address core congestion in Listowel.

Not least in thinking about growth is nurturing an innovative spirit in our community. I have recently floated the idea of an Innovation Hub or program in North Perth. I invite forward-thinking citizens to band together to make this happen. I believe this municipal government can do a small part of the co-ordinating that will be required, and I will put my shoulder, to the extent reasonable, to that wheel.

My second pillar for effort of this municipal government includes actions that improve graceful living across the lifespan.

To set context, I need to be direct – municipal governments have many statutory duties established by mandate and regulation from the province. I’ve never actually done the math, but my own best guess is that something like 75% to 85% of the total spend of the municipality is on duties and actions that we are required to undertake by provincial law or regulation. Practically speaking, when people complain to me about property tax hikes, it is very relevant to point out that there is very little wiggle room given what Ontario tells us we MUST do.

Where is that wiggle room? Well, at least to these eyes, Council has more discretion, the ability to actually make expenditure choices, in the realms of learning and recreational programming and parks, in economic development, and to a lesser degree, in libraries.

It is my opinion that we would create a pretty unhappy and unsuccessful place if we just told all residents that they need to make their own kind of programming because we were shutting down our efforts. Parks and trails have been places of comfort during the pandemic, and people are rediscovering the value of being outside. As we strive to greater housing density, we need to preserve programming - and amenity and green spaces - for those who won’t have a backyard in the conventional sense.

I make no apologies to those who have cajoled me to cut out our recreational programming efforts, or to abandon our parks. It does astonish me that there are such voices in our community. I think they’ve missed the big picture that humans are social animals who live in community.

This last term of Council saw sustainment in investments in our programs group for public recreation. Many of what was tried is experimental. Our poor staff puts up with a mayor who talks about roller skating and cricket and futsal and spaces for pre-teen girls. And the Municipality can be mediators in programming in our community in two ways – in directly nucleating activities that address across the lifespan, or in providing subsidy to support those who need the leg up and work with private providers of services. We have done both, and I believe we will continue to need to do both. The Municipality is, essentially, an agent that can do things at scale, and that direct intervention can improve quality of life. For example, in our last term, Council invested in supporting the Lonely No More program and Community Connectedness Coaching training in our area. This has brought about significant connections amongst some of our lonely older adults, and has exposed them to other services that they did not know about. As shown in that program, these efforts can be virtuous, and change the ability of some of the most vulnerable among us to gain some enjoyment in life and caring friendships. I am reminded that no person can be an island.

I will lend my clear voice – we need to continue to encourage innovation in supporting quality of life through strategic investments in programming both internal and external. Not only does it keep our youth engaged and trusting of home, it keeps our seniors comfortable, and it builds community. It is an economic driver that, when neglected, prompts talented professionals to look elsewhere for their livelihoods. Want young doctors and young nurses here?  Create and work to sustain valuable community programming and infrastructure. Build more inclusive parks that cater across the age span. Craft trails that wow people. Find things for tweens and teens to do. This is a clear win to make an awesome sauce.

It was a source of great personal accomplishment and may yet be my singular legacy to leverage the best of community thinking about some of the challenges of labour in our community, of youth retention in our community, into our adult learning centre, what we have now branded Set7. This innovative project can change the destiny of people in our community by providing skills training – including soft skills training – to those with need, and can change the prosperity of local businesses through labour retention and upskilling. I will call on Council to work with the many opportunities that lie ahead so that this initiative receives a reliable platform for sustainability. Set7 is definitely an unusual investment, so far largely of provincial money granted on the basis of a strong proposal – but it will create awesome sauce for years to come.

I will forego deep comments about what is my third pillar of community – our community intent and brands. Needless to say, I believe that my home village of Atwood is Canada’s finest small town Canada Day place in the country. In leveraging from a vision of that, we take nothing away from my One North Perth premise espoused 4 years ago – in fact, we celebrate its diversity in this way. Let’s continue to tell our stories of greatness. In Atwood, that means decking out the village in red and white in my humble opinion. Listowel’s emergence on the global stage has come through both our Sign Wars and serving as source material for the television show Letterkenny. Let’s figure out the rest of that story. And make strategic investments to support that.

I also give a shout out to something that I was quite proud to instigate – alternatively called the Agricultural Excellence Strategy or the Farm and Food Forward strategy. As one who has spent most of his life in cities, often called a “citiot”, I have had to learn about our agricultural primacy of place and history. And while I won’t claim that I can chat farming with great depth with our local producers and technology interests, I am very very proud of them and the work that happens here to feed the world. This next Council will need to engage with the vision, principles and practices of this strategy. I know our agriculture and agri-tech community is eager to see it happen. Agriculture is the prime ingredient in our awesome sauce.

Last of my pillars is beauty and harmony. I was proud to be part of a Council that funded a Community Improvement Plan and invested in a Façade Improvement program. I believe that to create quality of place and quality of life, we need to up our game in the general esthetic of the community. People here feel pride in our successes and accomplishments; we have been a community that is quite functional, and built on the hard work and practical thinking to build prosperity and happy lives for many. We are neighbourly, generally. From the complaints that I personally received, we know when someone is not doing their part with their own property. So let’s leverage that to pride in our downtowns, in our neighbourhoods, in our parks. Some of that, of course, rests with our commercial sector – and I encourage continuing efforts to create visible charm and warmth in our human interactions and customer experience. Some of that comes from the municipality enhancing its own commitment to clean, and might I add, weed- and graffiti-free streets, sidewalks and walls. And some of that will come from the efforts of the Listowel BIA and the North Perth Chamber of Commerce, from the Listowel Kinsmen Club, the Atwood and Monkton Lions Clubs, and so many more who give community service. These clubs and groups do so much in our community, and to them I tip my hat.

As a society, Canada has been drawn to take a look at diversity, equity and inclusion of all our peoples. We know that this level of government should also do its part. One of the things I will ask this Council of 2022 to do is endorse, by becoming a signatory to, Perth County’s Charter on Diversity, Equity and Anti-Racism. To do so might be perceived as merely symbolic. But I expect our organization to move beyond the symbols and into the hard work to build a better, more tolerant workplace and to promote a kinder, more tolerant community. We made a great small step in this current year with the raising of the Pride flag amongst festivities at Municipal Hall. We welcome insight from the community into further efforts.

I chatted recently with a friend and local businessman, and he hit on what I think will be a key theme as we adjust to a much changed world that is slowly getting through the hangover in the aftermath of the active pandemic; he said “People just need to engage, just need to participate”.

I told this friend I was going to inject that theme for my speech tonight. In the coming months, things will feel at times confused, at times difficult. Our ability to create joy in our lives isn’t always within our grasp, but often, you lose your most intense burdens when you engage, when you participate. Find ways to meaningfully do so. Join a service club. Engage with a community project. Create shareable art. Share your skills with all of us. We need many, many cooks in the kitchen to create awesome sauce. As your mayor, as your neighbour, I call on you to become a cook in the kitchen, building the awesome sauce we all so desire.

A few personal remarks are in order. I have delighted in, and been so supported by, the entire Council team of 2018. I will miss departing colleagues Terry Seiler and Julie Behrns. I look around this table very expectantly, extending a warm welcome to Councillors Sarah Blazek and Marc Noordam. We will of course, from time to time, disagree, but I expect our focus on collaboration will continue and be enriching to all of our lives. I look amongst you, and see a deep commitment to what is best for our community. Sometimes, it won’t be easy or obvious. Being patient and kind makes that journey a rewarding one.

To the wonderful staff – I am a wiser man than the one you met 4 years ago. In part, wisdom has been encouraged by your good examples, your patience, and your expertise. We are very fortunate to have such a good staff, in times where there is a poacher for excellent staff around every corner. Thank you for your service. Thank you for you consistency. Thank you for your deep efforts on behalf of that vision of building a great, progressive community. Thank you for your kindness to me. Stick around.

I am sustained by a wonderful home life. I am a very fortunate husband of 34 + years, to Sharon Flood Kasenberg. She is my heart and we are one soul. It is not an easy thing to be the life partner of an elected official. When the home phone rings, she is often the one who must gently or firmly encourage people to try me at the office, or on my cell phone. She sometimes must be a tension breaker. She sometimes is quite bored at the talking of shop that happens at community events, dinners, or even at Zehrs. She is a rock to me, and I am so grateful. Her sacrifices are significant. Same advice as last time – don’t call her the “First Lady of North Perth”.

My sons – Sam and Dan – could not attend tonight. They have been wonderful sounding boards over a long period of time. They help me to play and chill when things get tense. They are great people, each contributing in their own way and through their own interests in building a better world. I am one of their chief admirers. I acknowledge tonight the absence of my daughter-in-law Cait and granddog Nala. I think it might have been interesting to have a wonderdog in attendance this evening, and I might argue there is a nice cosy space at the mayor’s desk for that.

I am rather thrilled that I can also share this night with Nicolas Lopez Micone, an international student from Spain who is living with my family in Atwood for this current high school year. Nico is one of many youth who are part of the extended Kasenberg family, and it has been a joy to me to have honorary sons and daughters in many other parts of the world through our hosting of international students. I salute all of them… many of whom were fascinated by some of our issues, like backyard chickens, in the last term.

To the people of North Perth – I work each day to be a mayor for all. I work hard to be accessible, to be in the passages of our community’s life with you. I will work as tirelessly as I did in my first term to support community events, hear more from citizens, and to get us to the bright future that lies ahead. I am deeply committed to advocating for our interests, whether at this Council, at the Council of the County of Perth, or with other levels of government. I pledge my active engagement in the many files that affect our community’s interests and happiness. Thank you to my supporters, and to those who voted for my opponent, Mr. George. Please reach out to me or to your Councillors when you believe we are missing key data or interpreting things incorrectly, or when you need some support for a municipal issue. Remember, the mayor casts but one vote of 10.

Four years ago, I encouraged at the very beginning of my first term that we be North Perth Proud. While I remain faithful to that message, I think we need to update it a bit with a bolder call to action. We are about the work of building a great, sustainable community that facilitates joy. I’ve talked tonight through this metaphor of awesome sauce. I’ve talked about finding great recipes, being fearless about the high pressure release, about dealing with or preferably avoiding burn notices, about learning best practices, and about experimenting and innovating. And so I call on our community to create our own awesome sauce in hundreds of small and large ways. Let us recognize awesome sauce when we see it, give it a pat on the back, and favourably draw attention to it. Let us be North Perth Awesome.

Thank you.