Skip to content

Mayoral hopeful Miranda Rocca-Circelli launches campaign website

Complete with a few early platform points, Miranda Rocca-Circelli is the first Greater Sudbury mayoral candidate to launch a campaign website
250522_TC_Miranda_WebsiteSized
A screenshot of Greater Sudbury mayoral candidate Miranda Rocca-Circelli’s newly launched website.

Among the first out of the gate to register as a Greater Sudbury mayoral candidate, Miranda Rocca-Circelli is also the first to launch a campaign website.

The website, miranda4mayor.ca, recently launched and includes a biography alongside a handful of platform points, which she said will grow as the Oct. 24 municipal election date nears.

“It’s very important to look at how we can engage with the community,” she said, adding that a website and social media presence can serve as a good launching point for people. 

She also plans on hosting events later on this year.

“There’s the door-to-door campaign, there are all kinds of strategies.”

Earlier this week, fellow mayoral candidates Bob Johnston and Evelyn Dutrisac told Sudbury.com that they also intend on launching campaign websites but are waiting until after the June 2 provincial election so as to not confuse voters.

Although Mayor Brian Bigger and former MP Paul Lefebvre have also announced their intention to seek the mayor’s chair, neither has officially registered as a candidate yet.

Rocca-Circelli’s campaign points to date include:

  • Putting forward a motion to protect Laurentian University green spaces that border Nepahwin Lake if the athletic department and land is to be sold.
  • Review current services and programs delivered by the city to ensure citizens’ needs are being met and to find efficiencies.
  • Re-implement a decentralized model and review the potential to re-allocate some services and programs to the amalgamated towns needs.
  • Improving road infrastructure and making them more sustainable.

The mayoral candidate has also proposed that the city implement a zero-base budgeting system to “ensure that our budgets are measurable and efficient to the current needs in each department.”

Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini has long argued for this style of budgeting, which starts from zero rather than a fixed number at the start of each planning period and has resource requirements assessed and confirmed with each budget. 

Several options and budget packages are then put up for review that show the implications of maintaining expenditure levels or adjusting expenditures to meet anticipated requirements, which includes illustrating the implications of service reductions.

In a report prepared by city administration last year, various merits and pitfalls to zero-base budgeting are noted. While it provides for a better understanding of the costs to provide services, its operational focus doesn’t lend itself as well to long-term strategies as traditional budgeting. 

City council shot it down last year following administration’s warning that adopting a zero-base budget “would increase the amount of administrative time required to produce the budget without incrementally greater benefits.”

“It’s important at the end of the day to balance budgets so that there’s a better sense of what the budget planning can be for that fiscal year,” Rocca-Circelli said of zero-base budgeting. “It provides transparency and provides an opportunity to better plan for the future.”

It’s debating issues and ideas such as this that Rocca-Circelli said she intends to centre her campaign on.

She said she’s “just looking forward to an exciting, professional campaign.”

Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.




Tyler Clarke

About the Author: Tyler Clarke

Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
Read more