Platform | Jeremy Large for Mayor of Oshawa

A Real Plan For Oshawa

Jeremy Large has the real tangible plan for solving Oshawa's issues. A real detailed plan to address the homelessness problem. A real street by street plan to finally revitalize downtown so we can stop saying "revitalize downtown" once and for all. A real plan to address issues and make improvements to; housing, transit, traffic, infrastructure, food insecurity, our libraries, and so much more

Downtown

Ever since I was born 3 words have always been a constant here in Oshawa, repeated election after election: Revitalize The Downtown. Well enough is enough, its time to finally do it. So here's my plan

Put 10,000 people into downtown by building higher density housing

Install a free to ride Shopping Tram loop GO > DT > OC > DT > GO

Remove many of the cars from downtown

Construct permanent canopies over sidewalks to protect people from rain

Build 2 new parking structures to the North and South of Downtown

Purchase or build commercial space downtown to stabilize rent

Pedestrianize downtown core during summer (Years Later)

Subsidize some City commercial properties to help new businesses

Combine events into a larger event to attract people to Oshawa (Peonies Festival + Kars on King + Durham Pride + Fiesta Week + Rib Fest + Convergence) so there is a reason to visit Oshawa, and there is something for everyone

Clearly Define Oshawa's Downtown borders with agreements to develop one section at a time so the public has some understanding of the upcoming phases and can participate in shaping the growth of downtown.

Housing &
Affordability

Everything has gotten out of hand, so its time for decisive leadership to bring the cost of living down. That is why I will bring my ideas to City Hall and start an aggressive push to reduce the cost of living for the people of Oshawa

Build Public Option Housing with a Rent to Own Strategy. If you can afford rent, you can afford a home

Examine the feasibility of expanding school breakfast and lunch programs to everyone so parents don't have to buy and prepare those 10meals/week

Bring in Mandatory Food Donations for our grocery stores. No longer will food go in the dumpster when so many are hungry.

Free Dirt Fridays, and Free Stones. As Oshawa develops, dirt will be excavated, and big stones found, and those will be offered for free to residents who need them

Look into expanding the capabilities of Feed The Need to leverage their buying power to expand its offerings to more people to ensure a stable stream of donations

Expand the Library to include Things, not just Media. Allowing people to save money borrowing items instead of needing to buy them

Homelessness

The problem everyone is talking about this election. It is consistently the thing people want solved the most. With news that there are now 900+ confirmed homeless people in our city, with 350 of those coming in the past 6 months, its clear everything is breaking down and failing faster than we can solve it. That's why my plan is bold and ambitious with one goal: Get them off the street, get them inside, and help them

Build 2 new facilities on the South West corner of Oxford and Malaga. 1 for chronically homeless, and 1 as a new social safety net to stop people from falling into homelessness

Plan additional facilities at Simcoe and Wentworth if needed. Both facilities are in walking distance of my home so I can monitor them to ensure they are at my standards

We must take responsibility for homeless people and establish who's responsible for each person. We will determine which Municipality is responsible for each person via last fixed addresses. Oshawa shouldn't bare the responsibility of other municipalities' homeless simply because we are the largest city

Once all voluntary people who want to get their lives back on track have been helped, then we will work with the Justice system to offer reluctant people a chance to avoid jail for public drug use and other crimes to go through our new homeless rehabilitation system.

Once all the services and facilities are in place, then we will begin cracking down on homelessness, but not before. Residents want a solution to this problem, and we will be demanding more money from the government to achieve this as Oshawa residents send over $4 Billion annually to the CRA. It is time to get our fair share to solve this problem that has gotten out of control, as now 0.5% of all Oshawa residents are homeless.
Durham Homeless 2021: 573, 2024: 1345, 2026(July): 1937
Estimated new homeless since start of the election: 584Total(290 in Oshawa)

Transit &
Infrastructure

This is all about how people move within and interact with the city, neither of these are sexy, but combined they can make Oshawa a cleaner, quieter, and more livable city. My plan centres around making Transit; faster (speed), more useful, and in some cases free to use. Whereas my infrastructure plan is all about making the city modern, convenient, quieter, and more connected

If you are familiar with Not Just Bikes, Strong Towns or similar channels, then you can just skip this section as you already know my plans on these matters

Lid the 401 between Simcoe St and Howard St. Recent changes to the 401 in that area have made the decibel levels damaging to hearing

We will be going forward with a Tram on Simcoe St, and we will use those same employees and skills to build a Free to ride Shopping Tram from the new Go Station through Downtown, then to the Oshawa Centre before looping back to Downtown and the Go Station

Phasing out door to door garbage collection and begin the process of implementing underground dumpsters in areas around the city. Everyone will be grandfathered in

Propose a new transit corridor for North Oshawa, connecting Winchester Rd & Simcoe to Pickering Town Centre, following the hydro lines

With Newspapers effectively gone, Oshawa will work with Canada Post to use community mailboxes as places to announce zoning changes and other important information, as well as potential locations for community dumpsters

Examine and, if feasible, implement micro transit across the city as a way for people to bypass traffic during rush hours, and stop bottlenecks at Go Stations

Improve cycling in Oshawa as too many cyclists are driving because they don't feel safe biking. Get cyclists off the road, and onto paths like Whitby, getting people who want to cycle out of their cars and off the roads and thus reduce traffic

Implement Live Transit Tracking, letting you watch your bus coming in real time, like Uber does

Get an Alto High Speed Rail Stop

Library

Big changes are on their way to the library. In my lifetime the library has gone from books and newspapers to adding movies, video games, audiobooks and more. If elected Mayor the Library is getting another series of expansions: Things, a Machine Shop, and Dating are just some of the expanded offerings I wish to bring to the Library to help even more people

Library of Things, will be first on the list, allowing people to check out things like; Radon Detectors, Metal Detectors, Stud Finders, Hammers, Microphones, Tripods, Carpet Cleaners, Small Electric Generators, Binoculars and so much more

Dating got really difficult, so the Library could offer a way for people to find love. With my direction the Library will begin hosting dating nights similar to the "Thursdays" app in Toronto. Hosting events for single people to meet and fall in love.

Implement a Suggestion System so people can submit what they want added to the Library of Things

Include community Libraries in a searchable list on the Oshawa Public Library website. The book you want to read that is checked out might actually be available down the street or in another Little Free Library.

Libraries are repositories of knowledge, as such we will expand the Library to include a fully functioning machine shop, staffed by trained individuals. The Goal: bring manufacturing knowledge and know how to the people. Got an idea for a product, but lack the skills to make it? The Library Machine shop will have a Tool and Die professional to help bring your idea to life.

Set up a Library Association with Libraries across the world to pool their resources to compete with Audible. Hire authors to write books, professionals to read them and more to ensure that all books are accessible to everyone, without restrictions and without greed.

Green
Initiatives

Every Canadian could die tomorrow and we wouldn't head off global warming. We amount to only 1.5% of global emissions, so nothing we do will have an impact on the planet...BUT we can still use this new tech to improve our lives here in Oshawa. Lots of new "Green" technology are actually just flat out better than what we have, so investing here will improve our lives

Solar Panels are cheap, dirt cheap, we perfected the manufacturing. So now is the time for Oshawa to go all in. Every roof, every parking lot, if you want one, Oshawa should make it easy to get one. Initiatives like pay your original power bill rate, and the city collects the difference, financing options, and wholesale prices for us

Ebikes and similar products are popping up everywhere. Oshawa needs to be prepared for this, and take steps to improve infrastructure to accommodate this new era of transportation.

Greening our city, literally. Trees keep the surrounding area cooler by deflecting solar rays before they hit our black and grey roads. They also make neighbourhoods look rich. Look no further than Rosedale to see how stunning that neighbourhood looks because it has an extensive tree canopy. We will examine setting up our own tree farm run by the city to allow residents to pick trees they want in front of their own homes

Heat Pumps are amazing, simply put its a 2 way Air Conditioner, cold air inside and venting hot air outside during the summer, Then hot air inside and venting cold air outside in the winter. Using similar initiatives as the solar panels, we will heat and cool homes in Oshawa for less, saving you money each and every year

Miscellaneous

Sometimes your platform gets out of hand because you can't help yourself coming up with ways to make your city the best in the world. So after you've trimmed everything down, you are still left with ideas that don't slot nicely into categories, so here they are. Enjoy!

The full plan if written out would be over 100 pages long. It is currently 31 pages long and most of that is just point form stuff to help me remember my ideas like "Hydro corridor tram". I can't begin to imagine the full length of the document if I had to put the full set of all my ideas into writing

Implement an Actual Voters List. 75% of people don't vote in City Elections, we can reduce literature waste and ensure every Actual Voter gets visited by candidates

Attract Doctors to Oshawa by offering them housing as outlined in Downtown plans, and administrative services so they can focus on being a doctor and not an entrepreneur.

Transform Market at 70 King into a more Time Out style eatery for new startup restaurants in Oshawa

Improve our School cooling during hot months by personally paying for and painting School roofs white since the province has abandoned our kids

Examine the possibility of exiling violent offenders from Oshawa upon convictions, to make Oshawa a safe city to live in for everyone

Look into starting a series of city run businesses to compete and thus offer a Public Option. If possible then open the Public Option to those outside Oshawa, and have profits feed directly into City coffers.

Establish a minimum standard of living for Oshawa, so we never end up with shoebox sized Condos