Former Citizen of the Year files an hour before deadline
BY SAMUEL PICCOLO Special to the VOICE
Just sixty minutes before nominations closed last Friday, 2016 Fonthill Kinsmen Citizen of the Year Ron Kore submitted his papers to run for Pelham Town Council in Ward 2. Kore, owner-operator of a Fonthill grocery store, said that the decision to run was a difficult one.
“I like to be behind the scenes,” said Kore, who is known to duck out of photo-ops and hide from attention.
“I’m going to be out of my comfort zone. But I think that running for council is important enough that it’s worth taking the risk.”
Kore and his wife, Tammy, moved to Fonthill 29 years ago, and raised there two sons here. Kore grew up in Welland, on the east side, in a working class neighbourhood with a lot of immigrant families who worked in Welland’s factories.
After a couple of years in college, Kore worked for Loblaws for nearly 30 years before taking over the his store in 2009. He has long had a passion for community involvement.
At Loblaws, he worked with the PC Children Charity, and he has since sat on the board of Pelham Cares. When he was named Citizen of the Year, his work organizing the golf tournament for Niagara Nutrition Partners and the dinner for the Welland/Pelham Special Olympics was lauded. Kore said that it is this combination of business and volunteer experience that he hopes to bring to Town Council.
“There’s so much division in our town now,” he said. “People are afraid to ask what you think of the community centre, because they’re worried that friendships will be ruined over it. That’s not how things used to be.”
Kore said that his platform is focussed on several issues, with the Town’s debt load being a primary concern.
“I think that the community centre was the right thing to do, though not quite on the scale that it happened. It should have been phased. But we have to accept it now, and we must work together to make it work and to pay off the debt,” said Kore. “I’m a low-cost operator,” he added, saying that after nearly 40 years operating businesses he knows the numbers and where they need to be.
Though Kore called himself a numbers guy, he is also a very visible personality, often on the floor of his store shaking hands and saying hello to people.
“I’m always about being kind to people. If I have to give corrective feedback, I try to do it with kindness,” he said.
“I’m still a tough operator. I’ve had to make hard decisions, I’ve had to fire people. Those things aren’t easy. You stay up the night before, and you stay up the night after, and you wonder whether it was the right thing to do. But I always try to give people the opportunity to succeed, and you have to remember that it’s not just my investment in the store, it’s the one hundred and thirty other employees that are relying on me to make good decisions.”
Kore said also that a pillar of his campaign will be transparency. Some actions of the current council have irked him in this regard.
“The removal of the media table, and then the conflicting explanations that were given, really bothered me,” he said, also mentioning the trashing of Voice copies left for the public inside Town Hall, and the span of more than a month when the Town refused to answer questions.
“It was so childish. This is freedom of the press. Good or bad, the public has a right to know.”
Kore said he has attended several council meetings.
“I was there when they cancelled the promised meeting to talk about the debt issue. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Kore was also present when the Town Treasurer presented other financial information, about which no current councillor asked a question.
“Right now, I’d like for a councillor to stand up and ask some hard questions about the finances. What is our full debt? How much interest are we paying? What’s actually in our reserves? What are our savings? It’s not about trying to look good, it’s about getting the truth out there,” he said.
That the Town also forces the media and residents to unnecessarily use Freedom of Information requests also bothers Kore.
“Sometimes that’s needed, but for some simple information it shouldn’t take forty or sixty days,” said Kore.
“As a councillor, if people ask me for information I should be able to get it to them within a day or two. No resident should be waiting that long. There should’t be a filtering of information through the Mayor or CAO or communications person. There shouldn’t be a ‘communications strategy.’ It should just be communication.”
Kore also said that council ought to take a serious look at traffic congestion in town.
“I don’t know if that was studied enough,” he said. “After all that East Fonthill development is done, there’s going to be an even bigger problem than there is now. We have to really try and tackle that issue.”
Kore called development an important part of the town, but said that more work needs to be done to ensure the style of building is consistent with what is already present.
“We don’t need Toronto-style stuff,” he said.
“The problem now is that we’re not in a strong negotiating position. Developers can lowball the Town or push us further, because they know that we have a lot of debt and need what we can get.”
In business, Kore said, he always looks at the worse-case scenarios and prepares for those, and he fears that the Town has planned on the best-case scenarios instead.
“NAFTA negotiations, trade wars, all these things could affect our town. It could be tough. It could be very bad. It’s a small world, and we have to be ready. We’re going to have to cut costs, and we may have to raise taxes—we don’t want to be carrying a lot of debt,” he said.
Whatever disagreements Kore has with other candidates or residents, he said that he is committed to maintaining a respectful dialogue.
“I always ask people, ‘What would you do in my shoes?’” he said.
If elected, Kore said that he will be sure to keep separate his business from council responsibilities.
“I know people would come to the store and want to talk about those things, so I’ll have to say, ‘I’ll get back to you after six o’clock,’” said Kore.
“I’m not here to belittle anyone or put them down,” he said. “I’ve always tried to push the right buttons and get the best out of people. I still learn so much every day, and I want to do that at council too.”
