With a history of hospitality industry experience and labour union expertise, Robyn Vilde promises to “make a difference” and wants St. Boniface residents to “Vote for Change” as he seeks to oust Matt Allard for the city council seat. Episode 38 has a wide-ranging interview with the outspoken Vilde, who moved here from Toronto 6 years ago.
3.46 Part 2– Crime and public safety dominate doorstep campaigning. “People have definitely noticed a major change in terms of a negative sort of way – there’s a lot more petty crime “‘ all across the ward, including “voiceless” neighborhoods like Archwood and Holden. Vilde notes reports of “constant retail crime at grocery and convenience stores like the closed 7-Eleven beside Nelson McIntyre High.”
Vilde wants to implement a Toronto model of community policing “that I’ve seen works quite well”, using 5-year vets as a direct contact for a few years in the community, and also wants a full-time crisis unit to take calls diverted from the 911 queue.
Vilde maintains that Mayor Gillingham’s proposal to deal with homelessness and addictions wastes exiting resources.
“It seems we’re trying to reinvent the wheel'” by creating new services instead of providing adequate funding to homeless outreach agencies. He is critical of the City funding only Main Street Project.
“StreetLinks is doing a lot of good work in the community. I feel like it’s a crime that they’re not currently getting any funding from the City for the work they do… we need to start holding people accountable for government funding.”
Vilde explains, “We’re writing the cheques and if the results aren’t being delivered then maybe this isn’t the best way to be doing this and see if other organizations can deliver better results.”
“I may be a progressive, sure, but I don’t think we should be throwing money at something just for the sake of doing it – if we want to fix this problem we need accountability and I don’t think currently we’re doing that.”
22.30– ” I thought it was insane” that the City demolished Happyland Pool. “It makes absolutely no sense to me how that whole process was done.” A former lifeguard, Vilde will fight to preserve the pool in Windsor Park.
25.00– The City tore down the Holden community centre 20 years ago, and then couldn’t sell the land for 20 years until bureaucrats gave up. Vilde calls that “another example of total incompetence on the City’s part”.
29.16 Part 3- On Transit, Vilde says the attitude of city officials is “it’s ok to have 20-30 minutes delays and stop running” when people still need to get around.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me the service become unusable after 7 pm” directly affecting workers and customers, especially women. “It’s upsetting”.
Vilde proposes 24/7 service on major routes and extending hours generally. “A lot of my coworkers, they basically intentionally work later until after (midnight) to get a cab slip to get home instead of waiting 45 minutes for a bus to get home.”
With a second area fire hall slated to close, he explains why he filed a Freedom of Information request to investigate possible affects on emergency response times.
43.33 Part 4- Under Matt Allard as councillor, “the entire time I’ve been in the community, I’ve only seen a slow and steady decline” in the ward.
“This is not how we build a city that we all want to live in,” Vilde insists, vowing to fight for the community.
He also discusses ongoing infill housing problems -“we don’t enforce existing By-laws”, the strain the new Water Tower district is placing on infrastructure, and his opposition to big-money road expansion plans for Chief Peguis and Kenaston.
Vilde’s website is at https://www.robynvildecampaign.com/
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Coming up – St. Vital councillor Brian Mayes on infill nightmares
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Marty Gold’s columns in the paper:
Before voting for “more housing” candidates, read what infills did to St. Vital homeowners
Neighbourhood anguished over Gillingham’s bait-and-switch housing promise
