The City of Windsor has two candidates running for Mayor in the fall municipal election now.
Benjamin Danyluk filed his nomination papers at Windsor City Hall last week.
The only other candidate to declare so far is Ernie Lamont.
The incumbent, Drew Dilkens, has been silent whether he'll run for a third term, and earlier this year, Ward 3 Councillor Rino Bortolin suggested he was thinking about running for Mayor. He too, has had little to say about it since.
Danyluk, a welder at Southwestern Manufacturing, said if he wins, he will make replacing and fixing the city's aging infrastructure a top priority. He criticized past councils for focusing too much energy on beautifying the riverfront while roads and sewers decay.
"We see the same high-use commercial roads being fixed over and over again while the rest of the city is being neglected," he said.
Addressing the growing homelessness problem in Windsor was the second issue Danyluk raised with WindsorNewsToday.ca while making it easier for developers to build new multi-unit housing projects was third on the list.
He also raised the issue of hydro supply for a city that is growing its electric vehicle manufacturing base.
"There's been a lot of great advancement in micro hydropower plants. We have the river. We have a main water supply. We could start looking into things like that," he said.
However, it was how protesters were cleared out during the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge that motivated his decision to run.
"The Mayor is supposed to be the diplomat for the people. What I want to know is, where was the diplomacy? They never once went out and talked to any of them. They sent a sniper and assault team to go and deal with unarmed protesters," he said. "It should have been a last resort, not a first resort."
At the time, Dilkens repeatedly called on the protesters to leave the entrance to the border crossing. The city also incurred $5.7-million in policing costs during the blockade and its aftermath, money it is still working to have reimbursed by upper levels of government.
Danyluk admitted he is a novice to municipal politics but said his lack of experience doesn't discourage him.
"I'm the super underdog here, so for me to have any chance at all I've got to be the man with the plan. I'm going to be talking to experts. I'm going to be hammering these issues," he said.
The nomination period for candidates to declare their intentions to run for municipal office ends on August 19, 2022, and Election Day is October 24, 2022.
