A former council member is stepping forward to take a shot at the mayor’s chair in Fort Frances.
Ken Perry spent eleven years on council before an unsuccessful run for the top municipal seat in 2018.
He says he’s running to help improve the town’s image.
“We’ve had bad press and bad publicity for the last 3 1/2, almost four years, and I would like to see some good publicity for the town of Fort Frances and not bad publicity,” says Perry.
Perry cites infrastructure and taxes as key issues he wants to tackle if elected mayor.
“I mentioned to a few people that taxes over the last four years, the tax rate, which is what council has control of, has gone up about 9 1/2%, and it just can’t continue to do that. There are other ways to raise money in this town besides taxation, grants, user fees. We seem to have forgotten that user fees for out-of-town people shouldn’t be the same as user fees for in-town people,” says Perry.
He also renew a push for an increase in the amount of taxes railways pay.
Perry first raised the issue in 2014, seeking a rate based on tonnage, following the example in some western provinces, rather than one on the amount of property owned.
“There’s not much attention being paid to it right now. They’re the largest corporation in the town of Fort Frances, making billions and billions of dollars off of railroad transportation, and we don’t see any of it. We get a fee instead of taxation, and I think we need to change that. We need to petition the government. I know it hasn’t been completely lost. They’ve tried, but I don’t they’ve tried hard enough.”
