Kehoe, running in Ward 1, wants to see change

By JENNIFER BURDEN, THE Orillia PACKET & TIMES September 21 2010
Local businessman Patrick Kehoe is advocating for change in Orillia as he seeks to become Ward 1 councillor in the Oct. 25 election.
“As far as I’m concerned, this election is pivotal. We’ve got to change our course. We have to look at new ideas, new directions and new opportunities and really take this city somewhere,” Kehoe said.
Kehoe believes Orillia has lost its sense of vision and, like any business, needs to establish a strategic plan with hard targets for realizing a new identity.
“I find there is a great deal of apathy in the community and maybe that’s bred out of frustration,” he said. “I can sit back and complain all I want. I can write as many letters to the editor as I can. In the end, in and of itself, it’s not going to do as much as if I was (on council) and part of that team affecting change.”
Kehoe was an outspoken opponent of the new library construction, saying it encroached too much on the farmers’ market. In February 2009, he tried to persuade the city to purchase the former Woolco building, now the home of Liquidation World and partially vacant, on Mississaga Street West, to build the new library. He even approached Cornell University for help stopping the library construction at its current location. One of the university’s chief benefactors was Goldwin Smith, a wealthy land speculator who in 1872 sold two lots of land to the Village of Orillia for $2,000 on the condition that the property be used as a market block “for ever and hereafter.”
Kehoe and mayoral candidate Angelo Orsi also presented a report to council in 2009 stating the new library construction could jeopardize the historic Orillia Opera House because of the vibrations caused by drilling caissons, excavation, construction traffic and general soil compaction.
Although Kehoe said he thinks the library was a “dismal failure,” he would like to look to the future and help Orillia forge its own identity.
There are five other candidates running in Ward 1, including two incumbents, councillors Joe Fecht and Wayne Gardy. But Kehoe said what sets him apart from the competition is he goes beyond taking a position on issues.
“I have specific ideas and plans that I would like to share as a team with the new mayor and council and put (them) in place. I go beyond having a position on issues. I believe I have a plan to address the issues. I believe that’s the real difference,” he said.
One of his “specific ideas” is to repurpose the Huronia Regional Centre (HRC) as an incubation centre to assist small-to medium-sized businesses in conducting research and development in environmental technologies.
“This can be up and running in a very short period of time,” he said. “There’s no other site that I know of — and I’m being completely objective — in Ontario or even Canada that can serve this purpose better than this location.”
Kehoe is in the business of environmental technology himself. His company, Ecosystems, produces super-heated water used to kill weeds, soil remediation, and is currently branching into waste-water treatment. His other business, Kehoe and Associates, is a landscape and build company based in Orillia, but operating in Oakville and Mississauga.
But Kehoe’s overall objective is to provide residents with access to higher-paying jobs. Orillia lags far behind in per capita household income compared to the rest of Ontario, he said. In addition to simple poverty, he added that Orillia has many working poor, which only adds to the problem.
“We’re basically a service economy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the service, hospitality and tourism hospitality industry. But unfortunately, they are not high-paying positions. It’s tremendously difficult, especially for a family, to survive when the employment is seasonal and the pay is (lower),” he said.
Kehoe would also like to see the heritage initiative pursued downtown, while also linking the downtown to the waterfront more effectively.
He is aso adamant that a solution be found for the lakeside dump.
“There is no other way around that. There is no easy solution for that, I realize that, but if we don’t put ourselves under pressure then there’s nothing that will ensure that we’ll do anything about it and it has to be done,” he said.