A budget built out of other people's money.
Tim has a wealth of municipal experience. He has sat on a school board, on housing boards in two cities, and on the executive of a national organization, and every one of them handed him the same two problems a mayor gets. A budget built out of other people's money. A room full of people who wanted different things out of it.
He is a Civil Engineering Technologist by training, which matters more at a council table than it sounds. Most of a Thames Centre agenda is roads, water, drainage and development approvals. Tim reads an engineering report the way most people read the newspaper, and he asks the second question.
He was elected a Trustee for the City of Guelph on the Wellington County public school board. Trustees do not get the easy files. Tim negotiated across the table from the Elementary Teachers' Federation, the Secondary Teachers' Federation, the bus drivers and the janitorial staff, and every agreement he signed had to survive a public budget vote. He also sat on several school building projects in Wellington County, from the first cost estimate through to the ribbon cutting.
From 2004 to 2015 he served as a Board Member and President with the Sionito Group of Social Housing in Toronto. The portfolio included the Bill McMurray Residence, which houses people other agencies had given up on, and Sionito and Zerin Place, both rent-geared-to-income seniors buildings. He carried the same responsibility for Zerin Place in London. That is 11 years of signing operating budgets for seniors housing and supportive housing, which is why he does not discuss either one in the abstract.
Before the boards, Tim spent 13 years with Unilever Canada as an Account Sales Manager running the territory from Toronto to Windsor, carrying a number every quarter and reporting on it. From 2011 to 2016 he led an organization across Eastern Canada and built its first national conference from nothing: 5 time zones, one budget, and every piece of the logistics.
In 2024 he opened Caffeine Plus Inc. in London, so he knows what payroll costs, what a municipal fee looks like on a small business invoice, and how long a permit sits when nobody is chasing it. Since 2023 he has convened a seniors dart league of more than 50 players. Running a volunteer league is like running a small municipality with no tax base. You get exactly the participation you earn, and you find out quickly whose calls get returned.
Tim's case for Thames Centre is not complicated. He likes to serve, he likes to listen, and he believes a mayor's first job is to be a voice and an ear for the people who pay the bill. But, rural Ontario does not preserve itself. The pressure from London and from Highway 401 is not going to ease off because we would prefer that it did, and the decisions that set what this place looks like in 20 years are being made right now.
Preserving Rural Ontario. To live out loud and on purpose, representing the residents of Thames Centre.