The London Free Press – Neighbours Supplement
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Your Politics
Municipal Politics: Byron bus driver running for mayor
not
worried about lack of political experience
THE ROUTE TO CITY HALL
Jim Kogelheide is a man with
many titles. He’s an artist, a father, a
husband, an environmental activist and he’s hoping to be London’s mayor, as
well. The 43 year old Byron resident is
running for mayor in the 2014 municipal election. An art teacher and a school bus drive,
Kogelheide is a longtime community activist passionate about building a
sustainable city. The LFP Neighbours
caught up with Mr. Jim this week to talk about his reasons for running and his
vision for the Forest City.
Q: Why did you decide that
now was the right time to run for mayor?
A: My heart told me to run
for mayor. Everything that I’ve always
done has been directed by these inner feelings.
A lot of times I don’t realize what’s important for me to do until I
wake up suddenly at two in the morning and listen to the sudden thoughts that
start to formulate. During the last
elections, I thought, “I’ve got a lot of ideas.” I’ve been blogging about a lot of things that
people can do in the community to work towards sustainability. During the last election, many more ideas
kept coming to my mind and I thought, “I should do this… run for mayor,” but I
didn’t have enough time to prepare for a campaign.
Q: You have no past
experience on city council. Do you think
you have a deep enough understanding of municipal politics to take the mayor’s
big seat?
A: Absolutely! Some people have asked me why I don’t run for
council and very openly, very honestly and very quickly I can say that I
wouldn’t be able to fulfil my own personal mandate. My vision it to share – on a larger scale –
with the community, the ideas that I have about creating sustainable jobs and
sustainable environments within our community and the best way that I can do
that is with earning the top spot.
Q: The environment seems to
be one of the pillar issues you’re campaigning on. What local green changes would you like to
see made in London?
A: We can talk about garbage…
When I first moved back to London, after travelling across Canada for five
years, it was 2004. I called the city to
find out what was happening to the recycling and composting programs. I was told we don’t have a composting
program, “it should come in the next year or two,” and that was 10 years
ago! During the last budget, it was one
of the first items slashed, even though Joe Fontana has several paragraphs
about his love for our environment in his press release. All I’m seeing are forests being cut down.
“Jobs at any cost,” is Fontana’s latest motto and he’s proven that statement
very clearly. Unfortunately, future
generations are going to be the ones to pay that bill.
Composting programs have
been cut because whenever this idea comes to city council it’s always proposed
on a mass scale. It’s either the entire
city gets it or it doesn’t happen at all.
My approach will be to look at programs of this nature and bring them in
as small pilot projects. At least we can
get our feet wet. At least we can begin
the process of educating ourselves. If
we were able to get a composting program in place, we would be looking at more
local jobs. As these kinds of programs
grow, we’d be looking at more jobs.
Let’s look at recycling…
We believe that we can recycle
plastic. It isn’t true. You cannot recycle plastic. Recycling is taking a tin can, putting it
through a process and creating another tin can.
That’s recycling! That’s what I
believe in.
You cannot recycle
plastic. What you can do is decycle it…
taking one plastic product and creating another plastic product… BUT, it will
be a plastic of lesser quality. The
process to get from A to B is 10 times more pollution causing than the process
of taking petroleum based chemicals and creating new plastics.
The technologies that I want
to bring in are proven technologies that are being done in different
communities around the world. Other
communities have, “Stepped up to the plate,” and I believe that it’s time for
London to get into the game.
The whole point is that we
need to start somewhere. The city keeps
saying that we need to find jobs and I’m saying that not only can we create
jobs, we can improve our environment and be an inspiration to other communities
at the same time.
Q: What do you anticipate
your biggest challenge will be during the 2014 mayoral race?
A: I don’t think that I will
have a challenge for people to realize that I have leadership qualities. I don’t think that I’ll have a challenge for
people to understand that I have a solid, sound and well thought out plan and
vision for our future. My biggest
challenge will be to get this information out there, to get my name out
there. I think that once people become
aware of what I represent, that nobody will be able to disagree that sustainable
developments and lifestyles are the wave of the future. This is the way that the world is moving, but
Canada is a few steps behind. I want us
to take a positive initiative.
Q: Why should Londoners vote
for you as mayor in this municipal election?
A: I believe that a lot of
people have lost faith in politics. Most
politicians have a self-serving agenda – to better their own personal
career. I am not motivated by these
factors. I’m running for mayor to show
Londoners that leaders should have positive values that will allow our
community to grow with altruistic ideals.
Altruism is defined as being absolutely selfless.
I’m not going out there to
seek power… but to seek the opportunity to empower the citizens of this city.
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