Bigger comes out swinging at last news conference before election

The man leading the race to be Greater Sudbury's next mayor took aim at his closest rivals in his last news conference before Monday's vote.

At a Friday morning news conference at his Notre Dame Avenue campaign headquarters, Brian Bigger took aim at both Dan Melanson and John Rodriguez. Echoing their criticisms that Bigger hasn't detailed how he will find the $13 million he needs to freeze taxes, Bigger said they haven't told Sudburians how they will pay for their campaign promises.

He took direct aim at Melanson's proposal to issue as much as $150 million in municipal bonds to help the city catch up on its $700-million deficit in roads maintenance. Where will the money to maintain the city's road network come from, Bigger asked, if we have to use capital money to service a municipal bond?

“I'm looking for $13 million – that plan is looking for $700 million,” he said. “I will not bankrupt the city.”

And he said Rodriguez's promises to pursue his so-called “legacy projects” – a new arts and convention centre for the city – come without a realistic plan to pay for it. While Rodriguez has said he will lobby other levels of government for money for that, as well as for mining revenue, Bigger said that plan didn't work when Rodriguez was mayor from 2006-2010.

“They've never listened to him before – why would they start now?”

Bigger hinted at where he would find the money for his promised tax freeze, saying there are a number of future capital projects the city has been saving money for – projects that aren't necessarily priorities for the new council or for residents.

“There are significant opportunities (in this area) because there are tens of millions of dollars of open committed, capital projects at this time,” he said.

His planned Vision 2025 conference will help the new council get a better idea of residents' priorities, Bigger said, which will make it easier to find projects that can be delayed or dropped.

“There are many projects that have been approved by council as far back as 2010,” he said. “Yet staff hasn't begun working on them. How big a priority can they really be?
“They've got more projects in the queue than they can possibly implement.”

However, he declined to specify which projects could be on the chopping block or the dollar amounts involved

“I don't want to get into details at this point, because the council will go through the budget and look at all of these pre-approved projects.”

He also said some road and intersection projects that are being planned could be scaled back to be simple road repairs instead.

“There is value in simply maintaining our roads,” he said. “I'm not going to spend money we don't have.”

When asked how he will get support among the new city council for a tax freeze – when many candidates are making promises of their own – Bigger said many candidates are already mirroring his promises.

“Many … are following the platform that I have put out there. Many of the promises are very similar to the promises I have made,” he said. “I'm confident that we're already fairly well aligned.”