Better ideas
Challenge each other before proposals reach council. Different perspectives expose the costs nobody priced and the trade-offs nobody named - while there's still time to fix them.
Candidates · future council members · policy workshop
Bring your ideas. Challenge mine. Let's make them better.
Progress at a council table takes more than good ideas - it takes people who can work together. I want to build those working relationships with other candidates now, before election day, so a new council doesn't have to start from zero.
Independent candidates. Shared ground. A council that can get things done.
Build the working relationships now
Progress takes more than good ideas. It takes people who can work together.
A municipal proposal doesn’t go anywhere on its own merits alone - it needs support around the table. I’d rather understand other candidates’ priorities, working styles and areas of agreement before the election than discover them in the middle of a vote. That way a new council can start with some shared understanding already in place instead of starting from zero.
Better relationships
Build trust before every disagreement becomes a council vote. Knowing how a colleague thinks - and having disagreed respectfully before - makes the hard votes easier to work through.
Better chance of progress
Know where common ground already exists and where more work is needed. Even a good proposal goes nowhere if nobody has built support around it.
The bigger picture
Good ideas still need a working majority.
Municipal progress usually requires more than one vote, one person, or one good speech. It requires councillors who can build support, explain trade-offs, listen to criticism, change course when a better idea appears, and keep working together after a disagreement. I want to help create that kind of council culture.
Partnership does not mean automatic agreement. It means being able to work together when agreement is possible.
Independent judgment still matters
Working together doesn’t require uniformity.
- Each candidate remains responsible for their own platform, campaign and decisions.
- Where we agree, we can work together. Where we disagree, say so respectfully - and keep working.
Let's work the idea, not work the room
If you are running, considering running, or expect to serve on council, bring an idea you care about. I'll bring mine. We can test the assumptions, costs, trade-offs, implementation issues, and where support might exist. Pick a topic to start:
How collaboration can work
- 1
Bring an idea
Yours or a response to one of mine. Unfinished is fine - that's the point.
- 2
Challenge the assumptions
Costs, trade-offs, who it affects, what could go wrong.
- 3
Improve the proposal
Add what's missing, cut what doesn't work, name the unknowns.
- 4
Find the common ground
Identify what would actually move it forward at a council table.
Agreement is not required. A useful conversation is still worthwhile if we leave understanding the issue better.
Want to work through an idea - or explore where we align?
Work through the issue together.
If several candidates want to work through the same issue, I’m open to informal, issue-focused roundtables. The purpose is not campaign strategy. It is to understand the problem, compare approaches, challenge assumptions, and identify practical options residents can judge for themselves.
The policy workshop
Every idea below is drawn from what's already published on this site. Open an area, read what's proposed, and build on any single idea - support the direction, change it, question it, replace it, or tell me what's missing entirely.
Questions worth asking
These are open questions I don't have a settled answer to. If you have one - or a better question - I'd like to hear it.
If regular council meetings moved to an evening start, what would that cost in staff time - and would it actually get more residents in the room?
What is a fair, publishable standard for how often a gravel road gets graded, and how should exceptions be explained?
Where are the drainage pinch points residents already know about, and how should they be ranked against one another?
How much detail can a municipality publish about spending before it becomes noise rather than accountability?
What would make you personally take five minutes to tell council something - and what stops you today?
What is the single practical barrier that most often stops a small business or a young family from settling here?
Bring a policy idea
Ideas we're working on
A moderated record of proposals being developed in the open - not a discussion forum. Each entry shows where it stands, and where consultation actually changed the proposal, you can see the original idea, what people said, and what it became.
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Good ideas don't belong to candidates
If an idea that started here is picked up by another candidate, by a sitting council member, or by the municipality itself, that is a good outcome - not a loss. Nobody needs my permission to use a better way of doing something, and I'm not going to argue about who thought of it first.
Equally, if you bring something here, it stays yours. It is never published without your permission, your name is never attached without a separate permission, and you're free to take the same idea to anyone else running. That's how it should work.
After the election
This workspace is not built to be switched off on election night. Whatever the result, the ideas developed here remain useful - to whoever is at the council table, and to the residents who raised them. If I'm elected, this becomes how I keep working through policy in public, and the working relationships started here carry straight into council. If I'm not, the record stays available and I'll still bring good ideas forward as a resident.
Better ideas. Better discussion. Better decisions for Roblin.
Healthy disagreement is welcome. The goal is simply to find the common ground that could benefit Roblin.