Burlington has a Thirst for Moore. Ward 3's boundaries changed — its values shouldn't. I'm the candidate with deep roots in this ward, ready to bring our newest urban neighbourhoods and our rural heart to the same table.
Online: Oct. 14–23 · In person: Oct. 26
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Black and white. Not grey.
Clear positions, straight answers — real issues affecting daily life across Ward 3.
Residents are stretched thin. I will vote for — and work to convince council to accept — the 0% increase budget that Mayor Meed Ward has already requested be prepared. Three principles will guide every budget decision I make: Sustainable growth — new spending must be matched by new revenue, full stop; Transparency — if an increase is necessary, residents deserve a plain-language explanation of the cause and the driver, not just numbers on a page; Service discipline — every dollar of spending tied to a measurable outcome, reviewed regularly. And on the development side: cutting permit timelines and creating a city-maintained list of pre-identified sites suitable for different types of development, so we can move housing forward faster without sacrificing planning integrity.
The July 2024 storm flooded 1,620 Burlington homes. Those of us in rural Ward 3 know the lesson the city keeps learning the hard way: being proactive costs a fraction of being reactive. Stormwater infrastructure must be treated as the critical system it is — funded and prioritized by risk, not deferred until after the next flood.
Ward 3 is Burlington's most geographically diverse ward — spanning dense suburban neighbourhoods, rural hamlets, Escarpment land, and protected Greenbelt all in one ward. The proposed expansion of the Nelson Aggregate quarry near Mount Nemo is a serious threat to Ward 3's water resources, rural land, and natural environment. I fully support Burlington and Halton Region's decision to challenge the Ontario Land Tribunal's August 2026 ruling that would allow quarry expansion onto lands south and west of the current operation. Our greenbelt, our water, and our rural character must be protected — not sacrificed for extraction.
Burlington's land is finite and precious — and the numbers tell a troubling story. Burlington's development pipeline had over 45,000 units as of early 2024, yet CMHC data confirms only 539 housing starts were recorded in 2025, and the city permitted just 1,664 units by year end against a target of 2,724. The gap between what's approved and what's actually being built is unacceptable. I support housing that works for real families and vulnerable residents — not investor studios. That means tiny homes and supportive housing for the unhoused, live-work units, townhomes, and missing middle housing. Where density is needed, I want to see 2-3 bedroom family-sized units — homes that grow with Burlington families, not speculative one-bedrooms that sit empty. The City already has tools available — including city-owned land that could be leased for community housing partnerships, CMHC Housing Accelerator Funds, and new missing middle zoning. Let's use them and get shovels in the ground faster.
From Lowville Park to City View Park and the 20+ green spaces across Ward 3, our parks deserve better. My first action will be to push for a full performance review of the Parks & Recreation department — how is it staffed, how is it performing, and where are the gaps? I want to clearly understand the split between park ambassadors and park staff, because these are two very different roles. Park ambassadors are there to educate, inform and engage with the public — but that also means they can encounter conflict, and they need proper support to do that safely and effectively. Park staff should be focused on what they do best: general operations, weeding, and maintenance. At Lowville Park specifically, the permit requirement expired in 2023 and needs to be reinstated — without it there is no mechanism to plan, control or manage how the park is being used, and that gap is showing. In rural Burlington, where park staff already clear sidewalks in winter, I want to see that same workforce maintaining overgrowth and vegetation along those same sidewalks in the warmer months — extending their reach into the Kilbride and Guelph Line corridors that are currently underserved.
Speeding on our roads has cost lives. Enough is enough. I am proposing that council pass a motion requesting Halton Regional Police Services establish a dedicated mobility task force — Roads & Paths — focused on the full spectrum of concerns facing drivers, cyclists and pedestrians across Burlington. Once established, the task force would be operated by Halton Police. A focused task force approach will tackle speeding, dangerous intersections, and active transportation gaps far more effectively than piecemeal enforcement. I also want to see AI-powered smart intersections installed on our arterial roads to actively manage congestion and gridlock in real time — technology that other cities are already using with measurable results. For Ward 3 specifically, three intersections need immediate attention: the Palmer Avenue and Guelph Line intersection urgently needs a dedicated left turn advance green light for southbound Palmer Avenue drivers — during heavy traffic, which is most of the time, making a left turn onto Guelph Line is genuinely dangerous, forcing residents into gap-finding manoeuvres that shouldn't be necessary. The Hazelton Boulevard and Brant Street intersection needs a smart signal upgrade. Brant Street traffic volume is so heavy that residents trying to turn left onto Brant from Hazelton can't find a safe gap — so they get out of their cars and press the pedestrian button just to stop traffic and complete the turn. That's not a workaround, that's a failure of infrastructure. A smart intersection detects vehicles waiting to turn and manages the signal automatically, so residents can turn onto Brant safely without leaving their car. The Guelph Line and Britannia intersection — where a traffic light has reportedly been promised — I will follow up directly to confirm the status and timeline of that commitment and hold the City accountable for its delivery.
Your councillor should be reachable — not just at election time. I commit to responding to every resident email, letter and call, and showing up in the community every single month. I am establishing a regular schedule of Ward 3 Community Office Hours across all four corners of the ward, on Wednesday and Thursday evenings so working residents can actually attend.
First Week of the Month:
🌿 1st Wednesday 5–7pm — Rural Ward 3 (Kilbride, Lowville, Mount Nemo) · Suggested venue: Kilbride Community Centre
🏙️ 1st Thursday 5–7pm — Mountainside & Clarksdale · Suggested venue: Mountainside Community Centre
Third Week of the Month:
🏘️ 3rd Wednesday 5–7pm — North Tyandaga & Brant Hills · Suggested venue: Brant Hills Community Centre, 2255 Brant St
📍 3rd Thursday 5–7pm — Palmer · Venue to be confirmed
Please note that all venues are proposed locations only — nothing has been confirmed yet. We welcome suggestions from residents on the best community spaces to use in each neighbourhood. Reach out at katy@thirstformoore.ca. No appointment needed — just show up and have your say.
If you're not south of the QEW, you're an afterthought — that's what Palmer and North Tyandaga residents told me at the door, and the ward history proves them right. That ends with Ward 3. Palmer's shuttered high school is the right site for a real community hub — seniors programming, family space, multigenerational by design. North Tyandaga's flooding, traffic, and noise concerns go on the agenda, not the backburner. I knocked on your doors. Now I'm asking for the chance to actually show up.
Mental health doesn't look the same on every street in Ward 3 — a senior in Lowville, a teenager in Palmer, a family in Brant Hills face different gaps and different barriers to getting help. Mental health services run through Halton Region and the province, not City Hall — but a Ward 3 councillor can make sure every part of this ward gets its share, knows what's available, and has someone pushing for more at the Regional table.
Specific, checkable commitments — here's exactly what I'll do first if elected.
I'm Katy Moore — owner and operator of Katy Moore Wines, a Lowville-based wine business with over 25 years in hospitality and the wine trade. I source wines from international producers for the Ontario market, deliver directly to Burlington homes and businesses, and run tastings and a licensee service for local restaurants — all from right here on Guelph Line.
My now husband and I moved to Burlington in 2002, into a two-bedroom apartment on Elizabeth Street that cost us $1,200 a month — parking spaces included, both of them. A few years later we bought our first home on Woodland Avenue for $220,000, a price my father-in-law was convinced meant we'd overpaid. Anyone house-hunting in Burlington today knows exactly how much has changed since then — and why keeping this city livable and affordable can't be an afterthought.
Woodland Avenue was also where I got my first real taste of community work, alongside John Boich and the Rambo Creek Ratepayers Association. When a Walmart was proposed nearby, we organized — not against growth, but against the wrong growth: that corridor sits within walking distance of the GO station, and we argued land that close to transit should be homes for people, not parking lots. We didn't stop it — I won't pretend we did — but organized, informed residents forced real changes: the store was built smaller than the footprint they wanted, and its standard corporate look was toned down to fit the neighbourhood. That's where I learned how City Hall really works: you don't always win everything, but showing up prepared means you never walk away with nothing.
In 2015 we left downtown for our valley floor home in Lowville, trading one side of Ward 3's story for the other — and it was there I got to know John Taylor, our longtime councillor and a model of what steady, rooted ward representation looks like. When I learned John was stepping aside, I gave running serious thought. But once I learned Rory Nisan had John's endorsement, I chose to stand down — the seat deserved continuity more than it needed my ambition. This year is different. With Rory running for Mayor, the seat is open again — and it was a neighbour who came to me and said it was my turn. I've lived the urban Burlington experience and the rural one, and I've wanted a seat at the table at City Hall for as long as I can remember. This time, Ward 3, I'm asking you to send me there.
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I'd rather answer your questions in person — here's where to find me.
Sunday–Friday · around 8:00 a.m. · Lowville Park or the Bruce Trail · Winston and I are out every morning for about 45 minutes — Lowville Park most days, the Bruce Trail when we're feeling adventurous. No podium, no script — fall in step and ask me anything. Winston answers the easy questions; I take the hard ones.
662 Guelph Line, St. Christopher's Church. A mayoral debate hosted by the Men's Shed — I'll be there to meet residents and hear where the mayoral candidates stand.
Come hear directly from the Ward 3 candidates, myself included, on where we stand. Follow along on Instagram for the exact venue and time as details are confirmed.
Art Gallery of Burlington. I'll be there to meet residents and hear where the mayoral candidates stand on the environment and growth.
I'll be attending to meet residents and hear where the mayoral candidates stand on the key issues facing Burlington. Follow @ThirstForMoore for venue and time details as they are confirmed.
Follow along on Instagram for the areas we'll be knocking next.
Not on the list yet? Every street gets a knock before election day — or skip the wait and request a visit and I'll come to your door.
🤝 Hosting a street gathering, club meeting, or community event? Ratepayers associations, seniors' clubs, sports leagues, faith groups, neighbourhood watch — if you'll have me, I'll come listen.
The questions Ward 3 residents are actually asking — with real answers.
Burlington is at a Y in the road. One path leads to real growth, economic stability, and a city that works for everyone — residents in Palmer and North Tyandaga and Brant Hills and Mountainside, just as much as those of us in Kilbride and Lowville. The other path is more of the same: costs that keep rising, services that don't keep pace, and decisions made without the people they affect most having a real voice. I got involved because I wasn't willing to watch us take the wrong turn.
Ward 3 is a genuinely diverse ward — urban neighbourhoods, suburban communities, rural hamlets, and escarpment land all represented by one councillor. Every part of it matters. I've spent 11 years in this ward and 24 in Burlington, and I've built Katy Moore Wines right here — selling to Burlington homes and restaurants, knowing my neighbours across the ward. I understand what connects all of us: we want a city that spends wisely, invests in the right places, and actually follows through.
And if I'm being completely honest — I've been walking Lowville Park with Winston for eight years, I flagged a garbage problem there in 2018, and it still isn't fixed. Small things like that get lost in a big organization when nobody keeps following up. I'm the type who keeps following up. I know this ward. I know what's broken. And I'm ready to fix it.
Honestly? On many issues, not as much as you'd expect — most of us running want lower tax pressure, safer roads, and protected green space. The difference is roots. I've lived, worked, and built my business in Ward 3 for years — long before last year's boundary adjustment redrew the map. I know this ward's history, its files, and its people, from the rural roads to the newest urban neighbourhoods that just joined us. Ward 3 doesn't need someone learning the ward; it needs someone who already knows it.
There's a feeling in both Palmer and North Tyandaga that's hard to shake: if you're not south of the QEW, you're an afterthought. And the ward boundary history backs that up. North Tyandaga was lumped into Aldershot — Ward 1's agenda was Plains Road, and your flooding, your traffic, your daily frustrations didn't make the cut. Palmer sat in Ward 4, on the wrong side of someone else's priorities. Two different wards. Same result: forgotten.
I knocked on your doors because I wanted to hear it directly — not through a staff report, not secondhand. Here's what you told me, and what I'll do about it:
Flooding. Tyandaga Park Drive has flooded three times in 18 years. The last time was July 2024 — sewage in basements, on a street the City had just finished repaving from top to bottom: new asphalt, new sidewalks, new water mains. They upgraded everything except the sewers. Your neighbourhood paid twice — once in taxes for the repaving, once in damage from the flood. That ends. North Tyandaga's stormwater gets on the priority list before the next storm, not after.
Getting onto Brant Street. Brant Street traffic is so heavy that residents turning left from Hazelton Boulevard can't find a safe gap — so they're getting out of their cars and hitting the pedestrian button just to stop traffic long enough to make the turn. That's a daily indignity that should have been fixed years ago. A smart intersection at Hazelton detects vehicles waiting to turn and triggers the signal automatically. You stay in your car. You make your turn. You get on with your day.
Dundas expansion noise. More lanes, more traffic, closer to your homes. If noise mitigation isn't baked into the design now, it won't be added later. I'll make sure your neighbourhood is part of that conversation before the concrete is poured.
Leaf blowers. The bylaw exists. Enforcement doesn't. I'll bring forward real options — tighter hours, restrictions on commercial gas-powered equipment in residential areas — and push council to act.
For Palmer: the shuttered high school site is the right home for a new community hub — a seniors centre built properly, with the accessibility features and programming that seniors actually need, open to families and kids too. Multigenerational space builds real community. Palmer has been waiting. I'll make it a priority from day one.
My commitment to both neighbourhoods isn't a one-off town hall — it's a standing appointment. Starting in January, I'll hold monthly drop-ins on your turf: Palmer on the 3rd Thursday of every month, North Tyandaga on the 3rd Wednesday. No PowerPoint. No agenda. Just me, your questions, and a notepad — every single month.
I'll be straight with you: mental health and addictions services run through Halton Region and the province, not through City Hall directly, and I won't pretend a councillor can promise otherwise. But there's real momentum worth knowing about — Halton's Community Investment Fund put $5.2 million into 78 local grants last year, including a new model that routes low-risk mental-health 911 calls directly to trained CMHA Halton staff instead of police, Halton Police are rolling out their first-ever Mental Health & Addictions Strategy, and Burlington is getting its first Community Health Centre. What a Ward 3 councillor can actually do: make sure every corner of this ward gets its share — a senior isolated in Lowville, a teenager struggling in Palmer, a family under pressure in Brant Hills or Mountainside all face different gaps and different barriers, and none of them should fall through. That means knowing what's actually available, connecting residents to it, and using the Regional Council seat that comes with this job to push for continued funding. That's a real commitment, not a vague one.
I'll give you a straighter answer than you'll usually hear. Burlington's Mayor has already asked staff to prepare a 0% increase budget for 2027 — and I will vote for that, and work to convince the rest of council to accept it.
But a single budget vote isn't a fiscal policy. Here are the principles I'll hold to every year I'm on council:
Sustainable growth. New spending must be matched by new revenue. If we want a new program, we find a way to pay for it — we don't just add it to the pile and send you the bill.
Transparency. If an increase is ever necessary, you deserve a plain-language explanation of the cause and the driver — not just a percentage number on a page. What's going up? Why? Who decided? That's the minimum residents are owed.
Service discipline. Every dollar of spending tied to a measurable outcome, reviewed regularly to confirm the program is actually delivering. If it isn't, we fix it or cut it.
Permit reform and development readiness. One of the quieter drags on your taxes is slow development approvals — which delay the new commercial and residential assessment that would help spread the cost across a broader base. I'll push to cut permit timelines and to have the City maintain a standing list of pre-identified sites suitable for different types of development, so we're moving at the speed of a growing city, not the speed of a paper-shuffling exercise.
The long numbers are real: Burlington's infrastructure repair backlog is over half a billion dollars and our capital reserves are well short of the City's own minimum targets. Any candidate promising a permanent freeze and fully funded infrastructure isn't being honest with you. What I'll promise is this: every spending decision made transparently, every new cost matched to a revenue plan, and no bill sent to you without an explanation.
I'll answer this one personally first: I live on the valley floor in Lowville. When it rains hard, we flood. The creek runs through the neighbourhood, and I know exactly what it looks like when the water rises.
But flooding in Ward 3 isn't just a rural story. Residents around Driftwood Park in Brant Hills are dealing with their own drainage and flooding challenges — a different geography, the same frustration: water that goes somewhere it shouldn't, and the feeling that City Hall treats it as someone else's problem. It isn't. Ward 3 covers a wide range of drainage conditions, from Lowville's creek valley to the Brant Hills escarpment slope to North Tyandaga's established neighbourhoods, and every one of them deserves to be on the maintenance and upgrade schedule.
Those of us who live in rural Burlington already know the lesson the city keeps learning the hard way: being proactive costs a fraction of being reactive. Every dollar of maintenance deferred doesn't disappear — it comes back as two dollars of emergency repair, plus the cost no spreadsheet captures: the basement, the furnace, the insurance cancelled, the sleep lost. Fix the culvert before it fails, not after the road washes out.
My position: stormwater infrastructure has to be treated as the critical system it is — prioritized by actual risk across the whole ward, not by who complains loudest or whose neighbourhood gets the next scheduled project. Ward 3's creek and culvert network, its drainage swales, and its lower-lying urban areas all belong on the inspection and upgrade schedule. I'll also be watching the Nelson Quarry expansion closely: the proposed blast zone sits above the headwaters of Bronte Creek, and what happens to that watershed happens to everything downstream — including us.
This is one problem wearing two costumes in Ward 3. In our urban neighbourhoods, navigation apps route commuters off the main roads and through residential streets to shave a few minutes — and they bring their highway speed with them. On the rural side, those same apps send traffic down sideroads that were never built for commuter volume, sharing narrow lanes with farm equipment, cyclists, and school buses. My approach: traffic calming where residents actually want it, targeted speed enforcement on the worst-documented stretches, and peak-hour turn restrictions that make the cut-through slower than the main road — because the only thing that changes an app's route is making the shortcut stop being one.
On the enforcement side, I'll use my seat on council to request that Halton Regional Police establish a dedicated Roads & Paths Task Force — a focused unit that can systematically target the speeding, dangerous driving, and road-safety violations that neighbourhood-level policing doesn't have the bandwidth to tackle consistently. The Task Force would be operated by Halton Regional Police; council's role is to make the ask and back it up with the documented evidence from residents. Ward 3 alone is the size of some entire towns, and a targeted task force is how we get enforcement that actually matches the geography.
Tell me your street's worst spot through the Talkback form — the case for the Task Force and for infrastructure fixes both start with residents' own evidence.
Ward 3 is Burlington's most geographically diverse ward — stretching from the urban neighbourhoods of Brant Hills and Mountainside all the way to the rural escarpment lands of Kilbride and Lowville, with some of the best arable farmland in the region in between. Our boundaries were expanded to grow the population base, and I understand why. But growth and stewardship have to move together: the land that makes this ward special isn't something we can get back once it's gone. As your councillor, I'll treat Ward 3's green space and genuine farmland as assets to protect — not as inventory waiting for the next development application.
But protection has to be honest about what it's actually protecting. Not every rural-designated parcel in Ward 3 is prime farmland — and treating it as though it is doesn't serve farmers, residents, or the planning process. Ontario uses the Canada Land Inventory (CLI) to classify soil by agricultural capability on a scale of 1 to 7. CLI 1–3 soils are genuinely prime agricultural land. CLI 4–7 soils have significant limitations — rocky terrain, steep slopes, poor drainage — that make commercial crop production difficult or impossible. A lot of Ward 3's escarpment-adjacent rural land falls into that lower category.
The concern is this: under Halton Region's planning methodology, land can be designated as prime agricultural based on the fact that someone is farming it — regardless of what the soil can actually support. That means marginal land that happens to be in agricultural use can get locked into prime farmland protection, with all the development restrictions that come with it, even if it was never suited to productive farming in the first place. It can also work the other way: rural land sitting idle may be reclassified as prime farmland without the soil to back it up.
I'll push for Halton Region's land designations to be grounded in actual soil data — CLI classifications, not just current land use. That protects the farmland that genuinely deserves protection, while making sure rural landowners aren't having arbitrary restrictions imposed on land that was never prime agricultural to begin with.
Data centres in rural zones: a gap that needs closing now. AI and data centres are coming to Halton — there is already a proposed facility in Burlington, and more applications will follow. Halton Region has taken an important first step by prohibiting the use of municipal water for data centre cooling. But that protection only covers properties on municipal water. Rural Ward 3 — Kilbride, Lowville, the escarpment communities — runs on private wells and groundwater. If a data centre can't cool itself with city water, it could simply set up on rural land and draw from the aquifer instead, with no equivalent regulation stopping it.
That's a gap we need to close before an application lands on council's desk. I will push Burlington City Council to establish clear zoning rules that explicitly prohibit AI and data centres in rural zones — protecting rural groundwater, agricultural land, and the character of Ward 3's rural communities from industrial-scale water draw and power demand that those areas were never designed to absorb.
Stop it. Full stop. Ontario is not running out of rock — there are already 22 active quarries in Halton alone, with licensed capacity to produce 13 times the annual average demand for aggregate in Ontario. The Mount Nemo site produces a small fraction of the region's aggregate. So what is this expansion really about? Trucking costs. Aggregate is cheap; hauling it is expensive — and Nelson would rather blast deeper into the Niagara Escarpment than pay to ship from quarries that already have the rock. I understand that math; I run a business. But a company's shipping margins are not a public emergency, and they will never justify destroying a dozen wetlands, the headwaters of Bronte Creek, and endangered species habitat inside the Greenbelt and a UNESCO biosphere. This application was denied in 2012. Our Council unanimously asked the province to reject it in 2024. As your councillor, I won't just oppose this expansion — I'll fight for permanent Escarpment Protection designation for the Mount Nemo plateau, so no company can put our water and land back on the table every decade to save money on trucking.
Burlington is behind, and the numbers make that plain. There are 44,765 units somewhere in the permit-to-pipeline system — but only 7,285 have actually been approved, and in all of 2025, just 857 permits were issued. We have a city full of applications and a trickle of homes coming out the other end. That gap is costing residents: in housing affordability, in the ability of adult children to stay in the community they grew up in, and in the tax base we need to fund city services without squeezing homeowners.
I've held this view for twenty years. Back on Woodland Avenue, our ratepayers association argued that land walkable to the GO station should be housing, not big-box parking lots. That's still my position: say yes to density where the infrastructure already exists, protect the escarpment lands and farmland that can never be replaced, and stop letting process be the reason nothing gets built.
The types of housing matter as much as the numbers. Burlington has too much of two things — single-family homes and high-rise towers — and not enough of what sits in between: townhouses, stacked towns, low-rise apartments, garden suites, duplexes. The missing middle is what lets a senior downsize without leaving their neighbourhood, a young family buy their first home, or a nurse or teacher afford to live in the city where they work. That's the housing mix we should be approving faster.
And we need to be honest that the market alone won't house everyone. Non-market and supportive housing — deeply affordable units, transitional housing, supportive housing for people with mental health and addiction challenges — reduces pressure on emergency services, shelter beds, and our health system. Every dollar invested in stable housing saves multiples on the back end. I'll actively support applications that include non-market units and use every tool available at the municipal level to make them viable, including density bonusing and partnerships with non-profit housing providers.
More than you might expect. I've spent 25 years in hospitality and the wine trade, and for the last several years I've run Katy Moore Wines right here in Lowville — sourcing wines from international producers, delivering to Burlington homes and restaurants, and running tastings for people who want to drink better without the guesswork. Running a small business in one of the most regulated industries in Ontario means I navigate the LCBO, manage supplier relationships, watch every dollar, and get results without a big team behind me. That's exactly the skill set a councillor needs at City Hall. And as someone who sells wine to your neighbours and delivers it to their doors, I know this community — not just as a resident, but as someone who's been serving it for years.
Life is demanding enough. Between work, family, and keeping your home and quality of life intact, most people don't have time to navigate City Hall on their own — and they shouldn't have to. A councillor's job isn't just to vote on reports; it's to be the person who picks up the phone, asks the right question, and breaks the logjam when a resident has been getting the runaround. I've been walking Lowville Park with Winston for eight years. I noticed a garbage problem there in 2018. It still persists — not because it's complicated, but because small things get lost in a big organization when nobody keeps following up. That changes. As your councillor, I'll be your direct line into City Hall — not a newsletter that tells you what Council decided after the fact, but someone who shows up, follows up, and doesn't consider the job done until the problem is resolved.
Showing up means showing up on a schedule you can count on. Starting in January I'll hold Ward 3 Community Office Hours across all four corners of the ward — on Wednesday and Thursday evenings so working residents can actually attend:
🌿 1st Wednesday 5–7pm — Rural Ward 3 (Kilbride, Lowville, Mount Nemo) · Kilbride Community Centre
🏙️ 1st Thursday 5–7pm — Mountainside & Clarksdale · Mountainside Community Centre
🏘️ 3rd Wednesday 5–7pm — North Tyandaga & Brant Hills · Brant Hills Community Centre, 2255 Brant St
📍 3rd Thursday 5–7pm — Palmer · Venue to be confirmed
No PowerPoint. No agenda. Just me, your questions, and a notepad — every single month.
Email is the best way — I live in Lowville, where cell service is genuinely unreliable, so calls and texts aren't always dependable. But the bigger point is this: a councillor's job is to be your voice at City Hall, and you can't do that job if you're not listening. I'm on Instagram at @thirstformoore and Facebook, and I'll keep both active after the election regardless of the outcome — because the conversations don't stop on election night. You can also leave a message right here through the Talkback form. However you reach out, I will respond.
Three ways: request a lawn sign or volunteer an hour or an afternoon, or join the mailing list so you know where I'll be next.
Entirely by donations from people like you, and I publish where the money goes — see the full breakdown in the Fundraising section. Donations are capped per Ontario municipal election rules.
Katy's answers to questions from local media and community organizations — unedited, on the record.
I drive. I live in Lowville, where there's no transit service, so a car is how our family gets around, and that's the reality for much of rural Burlington. But it also gives me a clear view of the problem: in too much of the city, driving is the only realistic choice, even for people who would rather walk, bike or take the bus. My goal is to make those options safe and convenient enough that people choose them because they work, not because they have no alternative.
Burlington Transit is proof that investment works. Ridership hit a record 2.97 million trips in 2023 and climbed to 3.6 million in 2024, helped by the city's expansion of 15-minute service to six routes. People will use transit when it's frequent and reliable. My priorities:
Frequency: Expand 15-minute-or-better service beyond the current six routes. A bus every 30 minutes or more isn't a realistic option for most people's daily routine. Frequency is what turns transit from a backup plan into a first choice.
GO connections: Scheduling matters as much as routing. If a bus reaches Burlington, Appleby or Aldershot GO with too little time to make the train, that rider goes back to driving. I'd push for connection times to be reviewed and tracked as a performance measure.
Route review: Regularly review routes against where people are actually travelling, especially as new housing comes online, rather than treating the network as fixed.
Accessible, cleaner buses: The city has started federally funded planning toward a zero-emission fleet, and I want to see it delivered, not left as a study. Low-floor, easy-boarding buses should go first to the busiest routes, where they help the most riders with mobility needs, seniors and families with strollers.
North Burlington: Council has asked staff to design an on-demand transit pilot. This could be a great solution for Palmer, Mountainview and other urban Ward 3 neighbourhoods.
For years, Vision Zero appeared in Burlington's strategy documents without a plan behind it. That changed this April, when council directed staff to develop a Vision Zero Road Safety Action Plan and funded a consultant to write it. I support that work. My focus on council would be making sure the plan comes back with measurable targets, a dedicated budget and public annual reporting — so it becomes something the city delivers rather than another report on a shelf. Two things I'd push to include:
Streets that act like arterials but aren't treated like them: Some residential streets carry heavy cut-through traffic without ever being reclassified, so they don't get the traffic calming, enforcement or design treatment that matches what residents live with every day. The plan should include a way to flag and reassess these streets using collision and traffic data, on a faster cycle than the current multi-year review.
Smart intersections: Toronto is piloting AI-enabled cameras and sensors at five downtown intersections that adjust signals in real time for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. I'd want Burlington to test similar technology at a few of our highest-risk intersections, measure the safety results, and expand only if the data supports it.
Yes. I'll vote for transportation spending that makes our streets safer, and I don't see that as being in conflict with fiscal responsibility. The question isn't only how much we spend on roads; it's what we get for it.
Burlington has a provincial target of 29,000 new homes by 2031. With little greenfield land left, most of that growth will come through intensification in the existing urban area — without a matching increase in road space. We can't keep adding residents to a car-first network and expect traffic to improve on its own.
In practice, that means prioritizing capital projects that connect neighbourhoods to downtown and our GO stations without needing a car for every trip; being willing to redirect road budgets to safety and connectivity; and setting clear measures so projects are judged on whether they reduce collisions and improve access for everyone, not only on whether they move cars faster.
Comfortable means physically separated from traffic, not a painted line beside it. The city's cycling plan already sets the right standard: a connected "spine network" of protected routes designed for all ages and abilities. My job would be to make sure that standard is built consistently, not watered down project by project.
The Prospect Street and Graham's Lane corridor is the model: more than six kilometres of protected cycling facilities with upgraded lighting, crosswalks and sidewalks, backed by $3.8 million from the federal Active Transportation Fund. I want more corridors like it.
Provincial highways create two kinds of barriers. Physical — interchanges on the QEW, 403 and 407 are provincial infrastructure the city can't change alone, but the city can build safe, connected routes right up to those crossings and press the province for safe connections where the gaps are worst. Regulatory — Bill 60 bars municipalities from reducing vehicle lanes to add bike lanes except where provincial regulations allow. Burlington has already urged the province to reverse this, and I'd keep up that pressure.
Yes. Protected infrastructure saves lives, and I support expanding it. Where we build it matters just as much. My priority is a connected protected network on the calmer streets that run parallel to our arterials — a street one block off Fairview, lined with homes rather than storefronts, can carry cyclists across the city quickly and safely. The Prospect Street and Grahams Lane corridor, almost complete, is proof of concept.
That's also the most practical path under current provincial rules. With Bill 60 now restricting the city from converting traffic lanes to bike lanes, parallel routes are where we can build fastest. Where no reasonable parallel route exists — particularly for north-south trips across the QEW and 403 — I'll push for protected options on the main roads and for the province to allow them.
On health: A car-dependent city is a sedentary city. When walking, cycling or transit isn't a realistic choice for daily trips, people lose one of the easiest ways to build activity into their day — with real consequences for heart health, mental health and overall wellbeing. Every trip on foot, by bike or to a bus stop is exercise people get without having to find extra time for it.
On the environment: Transportation is Ontario's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, roughly a third of the provincial total. It's also a local issue: traffic affects air quality for residents near busy roads and highways. Fewer car trips is a climate issue and a public health issue at the same time. That's why I want new investment focused on safe paths and trails, connected protected routes and reliable transit.
About half of Burlington is protected rural land under the Greenbelt and Niagara Escarpment plans, and it should stay that way. As a Lowville resident, I know car-free living isn't realistic everywhere. The practical answer is to make the urban area work much better without a car, and to build strong connection points between rural and urban Burlington.
Dundas Street is that connection line, and there's a foundation to build on. The Dundas/Highway 407 Park & Ride already links drivers to GO Transit and Burlington Transit, with more than 400 parking spaces and dedicated bus bays. Plans for widening Dundas include HOV lanes designed to convert to dedicated bus lanes as ridership grows. I'd push to protect that timeline, expand park-and-ride, and design Dundas as a walkable community corridor between Appleby Line and City View Park — continuous paths on both sides, a protected bike lane, safe crossings at regular intervals, and design speeds suited to a community street rather than a highway.
I'd also support zoning for walkable mixed-use hubs around transit hubs south of Dundas and around our three GO stations — so people who take transit arrive somewhere with homes, jobs and services within walking distance.
E-scooters should be regulated under the same motor vehicle framework as bikes and cars — including a licence requirement to operate one. Right now, personal e-scooters aren't legal anywhere in Burlington, including on the Centennial Trail, where only the city's rental pilot is permitted. Whatever people actually see day to day, that's the current legal reality.
I was glad to see Halton Police launch an education campaign on e-scooter rules and safety, and I know city staff have been meeting with police and local school boards on the same awareness gap. But education alone won't fix this. Ontario's broader e-scooter framework only takes effect where each municipality opts in with its own bylaw — which creates a piecemeal, municipality-by-municipality approach that makes consistent enforcement across Halton Region nearly impossible. This needs to be provincially led, with one clear set of rules that apply everywhere.
One of my main proposals is to bring a motion to council requesting that Halton Regional Police Services establish a dedicated mobility task force — similar to the organized crime task force created to address vehicle thefts — focused specifically on mobility infractions: e-scooters operating outside Burlington's one permitted area, speeding, and stunt driving. Once established and operated by Halton Police, the task force would start in areas of greatest concern and rotate across the region from there.
The reason a dedicated task force matters here is operational: general patrol units get pulled away whenever an emergency call comes in, but a task force stays assigned to its designated area regardless. That consistency is what actually lets you measure whether enforcement is changing behaviour in a hot zone, rather than enforcement being sporadic depending on what else is happening that shift.
Creating it isn't something council can do unilaterally — it would require council to pass a motion requesting the Police Services Board consider establishing it. Given that every ward is dealing with some version of these same issues, I think there's real support for this across council, not just in Ward 3.
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A child should never die waiting to be seen in an emergency room. Katy was proud to back the federal petition for Finlay's Law — national standards for pediatric emergency care.
