Ward 1 candidate Tysen Galoni joins Eric on Love the North to discuss why he wants a seat at Greater Sudbury City Council and what he believes needs to change at City Hall.
Galoni says residents are raising many of the same concerns at the door: crime, open drug use, deteriorating roads, infrastructure and rising property taxes. His position is that property tax increases should be a last resort, with the city first looking for efficiencies, greater competition in contracting, better use of existing assets and smarter spending.
The conversation also takes a deeper look at homelessness, addiction and mental health. Drawing from his previous experience working with homeless individuals in Toronto, Galoni argues that the issue requires different solutions for different people — including mental-health treatment, addiction rehabilitation, social supports, housing and consequences for criminal behaviour.
Galoni also talks about his experience as a Sudbury business owner and his concerns surrounding building regulations, taxes and the difficulties businesses can face when trying to expand or renovate. He says Sudbury needs clearer, more consistent policies that encourage investment rather than standing in its way.
And when it comes to decisions at council, Galoni says he isn't interested in simply following the crowd. He says that even if he is the only councillor voting against a motion, residents deserve to hear why — and that his vote should reflect his own research and judgment rather than a “party line.”
Finally, the discussion turns toward Sudbury's future and how the city can become a place young people want to stay in — or return to. Galoni talks about creating stronger gathering places, improving recreational facilities and building a greater sense of community where families, young people and newcomers actually want to spend their time.
What should Ward 1's priorities be over the next four years?
Watch the full conversation and hear directly from the candidate.
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Ward 1 Candidate Tysen Galoni: A Different Approach to Sudbury City Hall
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Transcript ~4,044 words · ~20 min read
camera? No, yeah, talk to me, but if there's something you want to say to(...) people that are in cyberspace, look at the camera. Vote for Tyson Galoni.
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Hello, everyone, it's Eric here from Love the North, and we're here with another episode of, well, we're covering the election. We have from Ward 1 in Sudbury, Tyson Galoni. Tyson, good to see ya. Eric, thanks for having me on. Yeah, no problem. So, I'm gonna ask you the same, rough same amount of questions as everyone else has come through here so far. And the first question is, why are you running?
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Well, it comes down to a couple of things. And if I'm honest, I'm not a politician. I don't(...) necessarily enjoy being public facing,
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but I do have a lot of political opinions, and I don't think the current state of Sudbury is addressing that. It kind of comes down to, I think I could do a lot better job in the office. Than what we're currently getting. We're getting a lot of status quo right now. Yeah.(...) And there's a few issues, only a few. It seems like a lot, but there's a few issues that if we fix them, it'll make Sudbury a better place for everybody. Okay.
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What area, like what ward are you running in, and where does it cover? So, I'm running for Ward 1.(...) That's essentially a region street, a little bit past Kelly Lake, and then it's also worn to the four corners. Okay, so some of the area, neighborhoods you cover is(...) gonna be Moonglow,
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where the old Memorial Hospital is, down to where Sekuti's Bakery used to be, somewhere in that area. We'll show it on the map so we can actually see the actual area.
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Door knocking, have you been out door knocking, and what are people saying? Yeah, so it's interesting. My ward in particular,
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there's different neighborhoods there, and depending on what neighborhood I go to, I'm getting different responses. Okay. And it actually kind of helps, because my viewpoint was very similar with what my neighbors are talking about. We have a lot of crime in the area. Yeah.(...) So, I talk to neighbors, and it seems like at least monthly, there's someone coming and looking for open doors. Really? I've been there for about a year and a half now, and the cops have come to my door three times and asked me to see the security camera. Okay, have you ever had your car broken into? Yes. You have? They took my(...) golf rangefinder. I just got it for my birthday.
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(Laughs)
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I guess so. They took some change there. I didn't care about that, but they took the golf rangefinder. And I(...) never locked my door for years. Really? Yeah, for years and years.
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When I moved to Sudbury six years ago, since then I've been broken into three times, so I'm now in the habit of making sure my door's always locked. Gee, I even lock my shed when I just go down and to the other side of the grass. Yeah, yeah.(...) I(...) make fun of my girlfriend for her, because she makes me go out and lock the shed. Okay. And I think, well, we have to lock on there. Nobody's gonna go in our backyard, but it's true, people are getting more brash now. Okay. And doing those things. So we gotta be more on top of it.
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The other issues I'm getting, a lot of people complain about the open drug use. Yeah. So(...) in your homes is one thing, you still should be illegal. Yeah. We still sit around upon that and work about it. But as you're doing drugs in the middle of downtown or in parks or anything like that, and you're leaving the needles out, that's a big safety concern. Okay. Where all the kids are planning that needs to be taken care of.
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And then the one consistent thing throughout the neighborhoods was the roads.
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In other neighborhoods around me,
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some of the complaints were about property taxes.
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That was a big one. So it really depends on the area and you really need a balanced approach to address all of these issues. I'm not gonna ask you, but it would be interesting to know what are the issues depending on the neighborhoods that you go to Canvas. I don't want you to answer that here, but you know, because the issues in,
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around say(...) Ontario Street, which is towards the Lawrence Street might be different than the issues in(...) the Munglo area. Is that the case? Well, definitely. And even if we're looking at different wards, I mean, Miranda broke up, brought this up.(...) I don't know all of the issues, but she was talking about how there's a rat infestation in the lake. That wouldn't have even been on my radar. I don't think I've seen a rat since I moved this library. So there's different things and you have to be open to where the problem lies. But(...) in my ward specifically,
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the big issues are always the same. Just the priorities are different. Whether or not you're going to focus on crime or saving money on property taxes,
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they're the same issue, but one area has a little bit higher than the other area has the other one here. Before we get into(...) the taxes, for anyone who's in the extermination business, this is an open call. We do have a rat infestation issue.(...) So we're told, so contact us and we'd love to have you on the show. Sorry, Tyson, for hijacking. Yeah, no problem.
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I love public safety announcements. We really got that out there. Yeah. As for property taxes, what's your stance on them?
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So I have a, I think I would call it a realistic view of property taxes. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, so right now(...) it's a necessary equal, but I think it should be a last resort. So we have a funding gap for infrastructure. Over the next 10 years, there's $620 million that they don't know where that money's gonna come from. That the city of Sudbury needs? That the city of Sudbury needs to maintain its infrastructure. 620. 620 million. Yeah.
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We have issues with crime and homelessness, but I think there's solutions to that that won't necessarily raise our budget. I think there's smarter solutions that we can approach for those. But there is money that needs to be coming in to take care of these issues.
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And property taxes accounts for about 40 to 50%(...) of our annual budget. That's where the money comes from.(...) I'm not saying that we should just raise them like crazy, like that's important.
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I want property taxes to be used as a last case scenario. So if we can fix the infrastructure by divesting in some roads, getting rid of some assets that are passed through useful life so that we don't have to maintain them, that brings that bill down.
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If we can improve the bidding process for companies who are bidding to take on these contracts,(...) get more competition and that can bring down the price. There's things that we can do to address this problem that isn't necessarily gonna cost the extra $62 million a year, but it is a problem that has to be taken care of. You said 62, was it a 460 million? Well, 620 million for the next 10 years. Oh, okay. Okay, so 62 a year. 62 million a year. Yeah.
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If there's ways that we can do that, then that's always gonna come first, but we need to find that money. And we can talk about this in other ways. There's some big money that the city spending that not everybody's happy with.(...) Like what?
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I have to ask like what? Like what? The event center is one of the big ones. Is the event center the same as the arena? Yeah. Okay. The new arena that's being built downtown.
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There's money that could have gone to these issues first.
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Unfortunately, we've committed a ton of money to it already. And that changes the math a little bit.
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But there's definitely money in the city that can be used for these issues that we're not taking advantage of. And then when we've exhausted all those options, then property taxes come on the table. And I pay property taxes. I think most people here pay property taxes.(...) It's the last thing that you want to increase, especially with everything coming so expensive now. Yeah.
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But we can't live in a city where(...) basic services aren't being(...) provided some removal
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or where roads are being completely neglected. You know, those things are core issues that we have to take care of.
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I don't know the math on this, but anyways, I won't even go there, but I will since it came into my head. Is it cheaper for city employees to do road maintenance or third party?
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It's on a case by case basis. In general,(...) it depends on the equipment that we need. So if there's specialized equipment that is a big investment, then we need to contract that out.
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We need to have companies that'll come in.
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If it's something that you can just go with a shovel and some asphalt and fill in a pot wall, then that's something we can get the city to do.
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So, you know, there's no absolute answer. In general, I'm in favor of hiring contractors. I think inherently they have a(...) incentive to do a better job than city employees. So for roads and infrastructure,
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there's some work to do. There's a lot of work to do. Okay. And, you know, in my research in this,(...) it doesn't matter what you're talking about, whether it's the water issues,(...) whether it's the roads,(...) you know, the sewage system,(...) everything is becoming dated. And for years we weren't maintaining them properly. So our infrastructure, I wouldn't say it's critical, but it's important that we get it right now before it becomes critical. Fair enough.(...) As for the safer communities, homelessness, and open drug use?(...) What(...) are you hearing? So homelessness is a big problem, but it's a manageable problem.
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You know, the last numbers we have, they're from October of last year. So a lot of things may have changed and it feels like there's more, at least for me.
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But(...) the last numbers we had had 411(...) homeless people. They went out and they counted how many people were sleeping in tents on a night in October. And they came up to 411.
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And to me, that's a very manageable problem. So,(...) you know, I think it's very important that we respect and treat the homeless population with dignity. You know, everyone who's there, nobody wants to be there.
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Have you asked anybody if they want to be there?
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You know what, I actually used to work with the homeless. You did? Yeah, so I had a job in Toronto(...) where I would be taking homeless people to and from medical appointments. Okay.
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And it was a very interesting job.
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Were they real homeless people that like lived under the bridge or wherever? Well, homeless in shelters. Okay, so they're-- Yeah, so,(...) you know, we would work in food banks and people coming in.
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We would set up medical appointments for them and then take them to the medical appointment. Yeah. And(...) I had a lot of interactions with them. I can tell you that(...) there's a lot of drug use, obviously. In that cloud, you(...) can't reason with somebody who's out of their mind on drugs, but there's also a ton,(...) a ton of mental illness. So most of the people who end up being homeless, it's because they don't have support from their family or they were so out of control that they alienated their family for whosever reason, whatever reason it was.
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And they have a mental issue. They have something that prevents them from,
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you know, functioning in a typical role in society.
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And that's not something you can just punish out of. You can't just say, okay, we gotta get rid of them at any cost. You know, when I was doing my door door, I came across this officer and he said the approach to be(...) either have to leave Sudbury or you're gonna be charged.(...) For a homeless person? Well, for homeless people actively doing a crime, whether it's drugs or(...) whatever.
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When they would come into those encounters, they would say, well, you can leave Sudbury or you're gonna be charged. They kind of caught on that if they're charged, it's just gonna be a fine. And if it's just a fine, they don't have to pay it.(...) No, as many fines as you want, you know? Where's that? For real? If you don't have the money here, you know, they're never gonna settle into jail because the jails are already over full. So once they caught on to that, that approach stopped working and it was never the right approach to do in the first place. Yeah. You know, the approach should be that we should have the best support systems available for them.(...) So that's building mental hospitals for people with mental illness, building rehabs for people who are struggling with pre-condiction,
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having social workers be involved in helping through the process.
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And as we start to build that infrastructure,
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all of a sudden,(...) and sorry, there's one last one, building jails. So for people who don't want help, who(...) don't have mental illness, they're just using drugs and they just wanna continue using drugs, we need to build jails as well. So we need to have these three places for them to go. And then also building housing afterwards to help rehabilitate them and bring them into(...) normal society. Yeah, ultimately, you'd wanna have them being productive members of society. Yeah, and not all of them, maybe even it's a small percentage, but people will.(...) People come out of it and people do get out of it. I've seen it myself. You know, we had one patient years ago in Toronto who(...) ended up going to rehab and very. I didn't see him for months. And when I saw him again, lost a bunch of weight, spoke coherently, saved up $5,000. This is a guy who was drinking more than a case of beer a day.
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Not Listerine, but beer. Beer, yeah. Okay. Where he was getting the money for it, I don't know. But(...) he told me he was drinking one to two cases of beer a day.(...) That's a lot. That's a lot. And he's completely cleaning at $5,000. And I haven't followed up with him. Yep. It wasn't the nature of my role, but just seeing that he got to that point, and now he's in a position where, if he makes the right moves and if he has the right support, he can become a(...) function member of society again. Yeah. It's a pretty cool thing to see. It actually brought it to you in my eye. Well,(...) it's encouraging to know that it is possible. So I know you're going for Ward 1, and you mentioned Toronto a few times. Are you new to Sudbury? Yeah, so I moved here about six years ago. Okay. I moved to Sudbury right before the pandemic. Yep. And I was originally only supposed to stay here for a month. Oh. Yeah, and(...) when I came to Sudbury, I wasn't expecting Sudbury.
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In my mind, and I think this is unfortunately representative of a lot of people from(...) Southern Ontario,
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Sudbury was gonna be a hick town.(...) There wasn't gonna be any infrastructure. Gravel roads there with the grass strip in the middle? Yeah, yeah, and when I saw it, I was pleasantly surprised. And I had an opportunity to(...) purchase a business here. Yeah. And then I went on to buy another one. So I own Sudbury Regional Hearing Services and Sudbury Audiology Clinic. Okay.
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And that, I would say that my time in Sudbury has been(...) the best six years now of my life. Really? Yeah. Yeah, and I really am happy to call Sudbury home now. Yeah.
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And I wanna see it(...) doing well. So that's why you're running? That's why I'm running. One of the reasons.
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Let's move along just(...) quickly to building controls. A lot of businesses are having a hard time or they might be told it's almost impossible to build something new, find something, and then rejig it so that it can happen.
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From(...) what you know about building controls? Yeah. What are you hearing? Well, I'll be honest, a lot of what I know about building controls is anecdotal.
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It's hearing stories from other business owners and you know the stories that I have myself.
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But the general sense is that Sudbury is one of the most difficult cities to work with.
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When it comes to getting something built or doing renovations, there's a lot of extra(...) bylaws and taxes that really get in people's way.
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As I mentioned before, I'm not against taxes. The money has to come from somewhere. But if it's not being done in a fair way,
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it really hinders businesses and prevents growth.
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Does consistency fit in there anywhere? Yeah, so(...) what we really need is a good policy.
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We need to research what other cities have done, how they've had success,(...) fine tune our policy to match that and then keep it consistent. When I was looking at buying the businesses,
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one(...) of the big threats I recognized was if my taxes went up through the roof, I had to pay off a loan.
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I could be in a situation where I couldn't afford to keep the business.
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As a business owner, that consistency matters. But I think it also matters for people in their everyday life. So if you're gonna buy a house and you know you're gonna be paying taxes on it,
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you can calculate that into your equation whether or not you're gonna buy that house. But if those taxes go up through the roof, all of a sudden that equation's thrown off. Your payment's going up? Yeah, if we start changing things will we know it? It's gonna be(...) hard for businesses and people to keep up. So at(...) the end of the day, if you're elected, what would you do differently? Well, that's way too-- That's very broad. That's very broad. Let's try to narrow it down.
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Council votes one way and you're not so sure. This is just hypothetical. Would you actually put your hand up and say, vote differently or(...) would you tow the party line? My opinion, going from the last, I don't follow this stuff too much other than what I have to and what I see. But I was kind of hopeful for some of the councillors to actually(...) keep true to where they were going in their campaign, whereas as things went on, they seemed to just get on the train and ride the train. Yeah, yeah.
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It's easier to ride the train. It's like they're drinking the Kool-Aid. Yeah.
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I don't understand that at all. I think if you're-- The question or-- No, no, I don't understand that mindset. Okay.(...) If there's a vote and I'm the only person who's against it,(...) you have 12 people in favor with the mayor and then you have me against it,(...) if I put my against vote in there, I can at least speak my opinion. People are gonna be interested in why did you vote against that and it gives consideration for who's ever gonna take on that motion.
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It gives them something to consider in that(...) I don't see any reason why towing the party line in those decisions benefits anyone.(...) Maybe they're looking for points, maybe it's something simple. I will say that there's gonna be things that I'm passionate and well-educated about and then there are gonna be things that I(...) weren't on my radar, like that issue in Minnow Lake.
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So(...) things like that, I'd be more open to hearing opinions, but it's always gonna be my opinion that comes out as my vote. Last question.
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So,(...) excuse me. So we do a number of different types of podcasts here and one of them happened to do with kids leaving the North for their studies and going to,(...) leaving the North,
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how(...) can we keep kids in the North? Because kids are the next generation and if they keep leaving, what are we gonna be left with? Yeah, well what I think Sudbury's missing and it's a very small thing, but it's a very important thing
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is a place where people go out, the vast majority of the population can go and feel comfortable for a day.(...) Like a town square,(...) some improvements to Bell Park.
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Somewhere where you can go, you can spend the day, you can participate in community events, have a great time with the kids, whatever you wanna do there
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and then come home and it's always available. So(...) I'll give you an example. My dad actually lives in Mexico in Zewat Neu.
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And the boardwalk on Zewat Neu has a basketball court that has food vendors all across it and there's not a single night where it's not packed. Really? Yeah, there's always games going on.
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Just people, just locals coming in and playing? Just locals coming in and playing, they have jerseys.
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Teams? Yeah, they're teams. They're organized events.
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And you can just go, you can get an ice cream, you can watch the basketball game and it's one of the(...) coolest ways to waste an afternoon. Really, eh? Yeah, but(...) we don't have that in Sudbury.(...) People like to go to their camp.
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People will do things individually and it's families that are bringing people back. It's not the community. And we need to do a better job of making the community somewhere where people want to come to. People also to bring in(...) employees, to bring in people who wanna invest in the city.
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You're not gonna wanna live in the spot where you don't know anybody
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and there's nothing to do. There needs to be that area. And(...) simultaneously with everything else that I wanna do on my platform, building up that area is important. Yeah, it sounds like a sense of community. Yeah, yeah. And I will even tell you,(...) when I was going to a door to door again,
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one of the complaints I got was the arenas.
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Hawk and Dad.
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His kids are competitive so they play. In different cities and he said Sudbury has the worst arenas.
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So there's nothing to go through. For me,(...) I grew up in Hamilton. Mostly I have Valley Park, which when you go swimming there,(...) there's a sitting area for the parents.(...) A very nice one, there's again food, which is(...) something that you'd wanna go to if you're gonna be spending a couple hours watching your kids swim.
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And what we have here is there's features set up right next to the pool. Like I think money should go into building those up once we find the money. So there's other issues that need to be taken care of first.
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But once we have those issues taken care of and we can start to balance the budget again, then that money should go towards building up those areas.
