Cipolla moving on

Outgoing councillor plans to remain active in community after mayoral race loss
By SARA ROSS THE Orillia PACKET & TIMES November 27 2010
After nine years as an Orillia city councillor, Ralph Cipolla is leaving politics. But not by choice.
Despite years of mayoral aspirations, the 63-year-old came in a distant third in October’s municipal election.
Cipolla earned 17% of the vote.
He will be using his free time to reconnect with his wife Dianne and grown children. His daughters Laura, 27, and Cara, 22, are teaching in England. His son Carmen, 25, graduated with a degree in political science and is thinking of getting his masters.
Cipolla has few regrets about his election campaign. If he could, he would have cleared up misconceptions about the multiuse recreation facility.
He is a landlord in the city and his wife has owned CC Bak to Basics since it opened in 1971.
Cipolla plans to stay involved in the Orillia community.
Q: Politics have been your life for so long. What do you plan on doing now?
A: I’m going to reconnect with my family, basically.
My two daughters are in England. They’re both teaching. So hopefully, I will get the opportunity to go up and visit them.
My wife and I are going to start training to go to Mount Everest base camp. We’re gearing up to be physically fit by June. If not, it will be September, October that we will go. It’s a 21-day trek up to the mountain. This is sort of like my bucket list to do.
Q: Why do you want to take on that challenge?
A: Well, I’m a Sagittarian, so basically, the outdoors, the challenges are part of my drive.
Q: Do you see yourself getting involved in politics again?
A: Never say never. I will continue to have a passion for this community because I really care what happens to this community. I have been asked to do some provincial work and that, but I’m just going to take a year and just relax and see what I’m going to do.
Q: What do you mean by provincial work?
A: Let’s just leave it at that for now.
Q: In hindsight, is there anything you would do differently about your election campaign?
A: Probably not.
The issues that we brought forward were issues that really mattered to the people of Orillia and mattered to our campaign team.
I think there was some misunderstanding on the multi-use recreation facility. It was really (the) provincial Ministry of the Environment that held us up. It wasn’t city hall, or whatever. The amount of money everybody thinks we spent isn’t true. So there was a lot of misunderstanding that I would probably do different. I would probably take out a full page in The Packet or something and explain exactly what the chronology was in the MURF.
Q: Some people have been pretty critical of this past council. What do you say to that?
A: No matter what you do, 50% of the people will agree with you and 50% will disagree. Have we done good things? Yeah. Absolutely. We have done some fabulous things. We’ve created a new library. Was it the right mix? No, it probably wasn’t. In my opinion, it was too big. I wanted a 20,000-to 25,000-square-foot library, which would have brought the cost down substantially.
We’ve done a lot of infrastructure, roads, new park facilities. We’ve got a new police station that we brought into the stage, a new fire station that’s going to be built.
Q: There are only two incumbents remaining on council. What do you think was the main driver in that desire for such a change?
A: People just wanted change. People pegged us with overspending, which was totally not true. They felt the public didn’t have any input. We had a lot of input into the selection of the school sites, we had a lot of input into the recreational facilities.
Q: During the election, you brought up conflict of interest. Do you still think (mayor-elect) Angelo Orsi is going to have trouble being the mayor and being a developer?
A: People elected Mr. Orsi and this council. I think they deserve our support because that’s part of the democratic process. I would ask that every citizen in this community get behind the new council.
I’m not going to judge. It’s up to Mr. Orsi to judge whether he has a conflict or not. Do I believe there was a conflict? Absolutely. When you have a developer that surrounds the whole community as a landowner, there is bound to be some conflict. There has to be.
Q: About the election results, were you surprised to come in a distant third?
A: No. We knew we were going to be first or last. Mr. (Tim) Lauer was going to be second regardless of what happened because he had a certain following. Ward 4 was a big supporter of his. I could only get my votes from Mr. Orsi’s voters, or Mr. Orsi could only get voters from me because we had the same voters.
Q: Why do you think you had the same voters?
A: He’s a businessman, I’m a businessman. We’re right-ofcentre, both of us, where the other candidate was left-ofcentre. That’s why our voters were the same.
Q: How do you plan on staying involved in the c ommunity?
A: Orillia has been absolutely phenomenal to me and our family. I will still stay involved probably through some of the committees I was on before.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to mention to Orillians?
A: I would just like to thank them for their support.