2026 Hamilton Mayoral Election: Keanin Loomis

Thanks for that question, Joey.

And I'm happy to share part of my platform, which is called SMART Plan.

It's an acronym for Safety, Mobility, Accountability, Responsive Government, and Taxpayer Respect.

And, you know, again, you can go to votelumis.ca to see all the elements of our platform as we roll it out.

We've rolled out the safety, mobility, accountability part.

Over the next week, you'll see responsive government and taxpayer respect.

But there's a reason why safety is number one.

And that is, to me, the most important element.

That is what is truly causing us and residents across this entire community to lack confidence in Hamilton's future.

And because of the manifestation of so much is playing out on our downtown streets in particular.

And so I believe that, and I always say that the top three items of my first 100-day agenda is to hire the next city manager because that's the most important decision I will make and the very first decision I need to make.

I will work to get my first budget passed because the clock is ticking immediately upon inauguration and we must make an appreciable impact in downtown, particularly addressing the homelessness issue.

We have to have a far more coordinated response to homelessness and mental health and the public disorder that we are seeing playing out on our streets.

And so we have launched a couple initiatives within the platform, which is to create Safe Public Spaces Hamilton.

and safe routes to schools as well, which helps create standards for our public spaces.

So in cleanliness standards, safety standards, lighting, paraphernalia in parks, those sorts of things.

Then tie response times to those.

So a light is out in a park, you know, okay, let's get to that within a certain period of time.

You know, a crack pipe is on a playground, let's get to that absolutely immediately because of the need to address that.

And then accountability around that and being able to see exactly how we are responding.

addressing these issues and whether we're doing it right and doing it quickly and doing it as I promised.

Part of this as well, our safety plan is to address downtown safety and the economy at the same time because they are so jointly linked together.

And not only is a moral imperative, but it's an economic imperative that we address this.

And not only is an economic imperative, we know that the economy operates on confidence.

And again, right now, there is a complete lack of confidence in our city, but it's primarily because there's a lack of confidence in our city and in our leadership and what in particular is happening in City Hall.