The tourism line in the budget reads $0. Here is who fixes that.

Stand on our waterfront for an hour and count the boats. The Carillon lock sits just downstream of us. In one year, Parks Canada counted 27,915 visits there. Boaters and visitors already travel this river. The Town spends nothing to make them stop by.

The Town's own budget book has a tourism line printed in it. Line 950, tourism: $0. It is just left empty, year after year. The job of bringing people here has no budget of its own.

Our waterfront The Carillon lock 27,915 visits

Line 950, tourism: $0

First, what I will not do

You will not hear me attack a dollar this Town spends on an event. Every event we still have is held up by volunteers: clubs, service groups, somebody's kitchen table. Those people are carrying this town on their backs. The businesses that write sponsorship cheques are carrying it with them. Sometimes an organizer steps back. Sometimes the paperwork and the insurance get too heavy. Either way, the event just dies. That is how the system is built today, and it is nobody's fault.

So my plan starts with partnership. Keep the volunteers, keep the sponsors, and add the one thing the system is missing. An owner. Somebody whose job is to make the street, the river and the calendar earn money.

Why the street, the water and the festivals are one job

A festival fills Main Street. The crowd walks the street and spends in the shops. The shops earn enough to sponsor the next event. The river is the reason half those visitors came at all. That is one loop, one economy. Break that loop anywhere and all three pieces weaken together. That is why my platform treats them as one point. It is why this plan treats them as one job.

The street itself is point 1 of my platform. Main West gets rebuilt in 2027. The roads plan says exactly how I will work that rebuild. This plan is about what the street is for once it is fixed. Ontario's own population forecasters expect this county to grow by half again between 2025 and 2051. The visitors and the new residents are coming to the region either way. The question is whether they stop in Hawkesbury. People stay where there is work. They invest where the street is alive. That is how points 3 and 4 of my platform lean on this one.

The downtown improvement budget has not gone up in six years. That is the money the downtown businesses pay in for their own street.

1. Point 2 of 5 Take a walk with me. This is our Main Street. Keep swiping and you come out at the water.
2. Main Street Lights back on. Shops open, awnings out, somewhere worth parking for. A downtown earns its keep or it empties out.
3. Our festivals Somewhere to gather. Festivals are the days people come downtown, stay a few hours and spend it here. That is the whole point of them.
4. The waterfront The river we own. We live on a river most of us only drive past. A waterfront we actually use is the cheapest attraction we have.
5. One job Three at once. Those three are one job. A downtown worth walking, a river we actually use, and reasons to gather again.

How we got here

Who holds each piece of this job

Like the roads, this job runs through every level of government.

None of that money asks for a tax increase. It asks for somebody whose job is to send in the applications. And it asks for a council that votes to let them.

And asking works. Cornwall, a town in Prince Edward Island smaller than ours, got about $4.3 million from the federal government for updating its building rules. There is no public record that Hawkesbury ever asked. It was a different program, but the lesson is the same. The towns that show up with applications get the cheques.

The six moves, and who votes on each

A mayor of Hawkesbury has one vote of seven.

1. My pen Give the zero an owner. The mayor personally writes the 2027 budget. I will write a tourism and events job into it. That means one person who answers for visitors, grants and the calendar. That owner gets a target and files a public report. Council can change it, and the debate happens in the open.
2. My pen An events policy that carries the paperwork. Today the Town's own events guide puts the insurance, the certificates, the electricity and the toilets on the volunteers. Champlain Township next door publishes an events policy. It has a pot of money organizers can apply for. It also has a rule that lets the township's own insurance cover an event the township runs together with the organizers. I will put a Hawkesbury policy built on that model in front of council for a vote. Four votes of seven.
3. My pen One sponsorship menu for every event. One festival here already publishes its sponsorship levels, with local business names on every one. That way of doing it belongs to the whole calendar. The Town's events owner offers one menu to the downtown businesses, the Chamber of Commerce and the sponsors already writing cheques. Then volunteer organizers stop chasing sponsors one door at a time. Local businesses buy a season instead, because a full street is worth money to them.
4. Application A grant calendar with an owner. Federal money for festivals. Provincial money for events. Grants for francophone communities. Student summer wages. Each one has a deadline every year. The events owner keeps the calendar and gets the applications in on time. Every fall, that owner reports which applications went in and what came back.
5. My pen Life at the waterfront before concrete at the waterfront. The Town's own plan went to council for a vote in June. Residents told its authors what they want down there: concession stands, vendors, patios with live music. None of that needs a construction season. It needs permits, a rental on the water, and a calendar that puts events beside the river on purpose. Towns up this same river already run that playbook.
6. My pen Report what the calendar earns, every year. The goal gets written down: events that pay their own way through sponsorship, vendors and grants. Then a public report every year. It shows what each Town-supported event cost, what it brought in, and what changed.

What I cannot promise, and what I will try

I cannot promise you a headline act, and I will not invent a festival from a podium. Good events come from organizers, and what I will try for is a Town that makes their job lighter. I cannot hand you a number for what tourism will bring in either. Anyone who puts a number on that for a town with a zero line is guessing, and I do not campaign on guesses. The events this town already loves belong to the volunteers who run them. The credit stays theirs. The Town's part is the paperwork, the insurance and the grant applications. The Town carries that, and the next event dies of old age instead of exhaustion.

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