Town and regional councillor for Ward 6, Tom Adams, is concerned about readying Oakville for the population increase that the province plans to assimilate into the GTA and will inevitably impact the region of Halton in the coming years.
“The province is looking out to 2041 in its planning,” said Adams, “and they’re looking at Halton to take on another enormous pile of growth, making Halton go to a million people.”
Adams feels if a million people are going to come to the region, where they’ll go is an important question. Making sure this type of population increase does as little as possible to affect the lifestyles of existing residents will be a main priority in his next term.
One area he thinks will be an issue is transportation and he’d like to make sure capital plans keep up with the growth. The town has already increased the transportation budget by several million in the last few years. Adams would like to keep with that in order to be ready for the new residents as they arrive.
Along with the transit he thinks the region should upgrade its roads as development happens instead of after.
“It used to be that we would let the development happen, then build the roads to come later, and in the meantime everybody was stuck in traffic,” he said. “So we’ve got to make sure that we continue to get ahead of that curb and build a new community in time for residents to move in.”
Creating new facilities and maintaining existing ones is also a priority. In the last two terms entire communities have been built and with them the town has been trying to keep up by creating sports complexes and cultural centres to accommodate the new neighbourhoods.
“We’ve got plans for that in our ten year capital plan in Oakville as well for the community facilities like libraries,” Adams said.
Adams moved to Oakville in 1998 from the town of Nepean near Ottawa. He has a degree in engineering and an MBA in finance and worked with the Bank of Montreal dealing with risk management. He also serves on the Budget Committee as well as Halton’s Planning and Public Works Committee.
Contacting Tom Adams
home: (289) 838-4900
email: [email protected]
District: Ward 6
Position: Town & Regional Councillor