Chapman looking forward to council return

By Chris Jones/The Oshawa Express

Bob Chapman is the long way back from where he started.

The former Oshawa councillor had vacated his seat at city hall in order to run for the Conservatives in the recent provincial election. He lost to Oshawa MPP incumbent Jennifer French by a mere 1,707 votes.

After this loss, Chapman said publicly he would not be running in this fall’s municipal election. However, while the former police officer with the Durham Region Police Service was away on vacation with his wife, he says he came home to a deluge of emails from residents across the city asking him to return to local politics. This gentle nudging caused him to reevaluate his stance and the rest is history.

“They said that I needed to run – that I did a good job at council before and they’d like to see me back and continue that work,” says the newly elected regional councillor for Ward 3. “If I was going to represent some place, I was going to represent my neighbours and where I live.”

Chapman says he still has a lot to give to Oshawa and is happy to be back on council, although he would have thrown his energy into charity work if he hadn’t been elected.

“I’m still a fairly young man and still have lots of energy,” he says. “I would’ve ended up probably spending more volunteer hours with different groups – I volunteer with a lot of charities and help a number of them.”

Feed the Need in Durham is one of the charities that he particularly enjoys working with.

Chapman says that the last council did a few things well, such as “maintaining affordability,” by having a sound financial strategy by paying down debt, increasing reserves and investing in infrastructure.

He went on to say they did a good job by working well together and co-operating with one another.

“In most cases they were co-operative with each other and had a common vision and goal in moving the city in the same direction,” says Chapman.

In terms of the upcoming council, Chapman thinks it is “an interesting group.”

“We have some folks returning that have been off council for a number of years, and then we have folks that are returning from the last council, and then we have some brand new people.”

To Chapman, the big issues for Oshawa go back to affordability.

“We’ve got to continue paying down the debt, we have to keep continuing to make sure that the reserves continue to be built up and remain healthy, that the taxes stay as low as possible and that the money we collect from those taxes is spent appropriately,” says Chapman.

Addressing the city’s opioid and homelessness issues are other priorities.

“Oshawa is a caring city,” he says. “We have a lot of services here and this is why we have some of the people that need more help than others in Oshawa.”

Chapman says that due to the high volume of food banks and social services that can be found in Oshawa, the city has a more visible homeless population than other cities throughout the region.

For all of Durham, Chapman says, “What I want to do is continue the growth to find some new jobs.”

Controlled by the province, Chapman wants to see employment land surrounding Highway 407 released so that they can “get some folks to move here with some commercial and industrial jobs in that area.”

Chapman says that he is already getting calls from people in Ward 3, so he thinks it shows that people are aware of whom their councillors are.

“Having said that, I’ve also gotten calls from people outside of Ward 3.”

He believes that this is because there are people who already know who he is and what he’s done for the city.

“[The ward system] allows us to focus more on issues that some of the constituents will bring forward from their own particular ward,” says Chapman. “Having said that, each ward’s councillor has to bear in mind that we have to make sure that the city as a whole is moving in the right direction and that it’s not all ward focused.”