Adam Bramburger
Beaver Staff
A longtime business owner in Bath, Joy Silver has made it a habit of sitting at Loyalist Township council meetings to hold representatives accountable.
She’s hopeful that her next trip to the Odessa office will one with added responsibility as she is seeking the mayor’s seat.
If elected, one of her first priorities is kick starting the local economy by attracting new business.
“We need to bring in business. We need to get our industrial parks moving,” she said. We’re not growing because we have no economic development.”
The lifelong resident of Loyalist Township believes she can help promote the business community and work with people to get funding and results.
Silver also said she plans to put her interests in politics and business to work if she’s successful in her run for mayor.
Financially, she said she’d like to work to put the township in improved fiscal footing and reduce debt. To do that, she’d start an immediate review of the municipality’s books.
“We have to go line-for-line over the budget and clean up the debt,” she said. “I would like an audit done.”
Silver also believes in increasing transparency of council business, saying she’d remove a rule that prohibits the recording of public sessions of council and look into live streaming. She is also in favour of an idea of moving council meetings to churches and schools in the community, while using the current council chambers to accommodate the overflow of staff at the Odessa office.
The candidate, who previously ran for council and deputy mayor, told the Beaver she’s looking to change an environment in the township where she says council has allowed staff to take over.
Silver previously spent seven terms on recreation committees within the township and said she has had a hand in many parks being built. Priorities for recreation include making better use of the waterfront — an avid sailer, she says the waters are some of the best anywhere in the world, and creating a dog park and a splash pad.
Silver chaired Bath’s 50th Canada Day celebration and the event received an award from Lennox and Addington as tourism event of the year.
Looking at the future development of the township, Silver said she’d work to protect farmland and nature.
Overall, she just wants to help people in her community.
“It’s about helping everybody. My parents taught me to help people,” Silver said. “I didn’t plan to go into politics, it’s a path I had to go down to make things better. I don’t plan to be a politician a long time. I want to get in, get things on the right road and move on to other things in life.”