For an event designed to make municipal leadership accessible to the community, moving Lunch with the Mayors to Memorial Arena was a smart choice. With more tickets available than ever before, the room was still packed to the gills, with a few interested stragglers watching from the back.
This marks the last Chamber of Commerce Lunch with the Mayors for the 2022-26 term of council. For Southwold mayor Grant Jones, this marks an impressive 14th year in a row at the head table. For St. Thomas mayor Joe Preston, it’s a strong but swift exit.
“Boy, we did more than we didn’t!” Preston exclaimed, praising the combined St. Thomas and Elgin team for the new community growth, both in labour opportunities and housing. He spoke with real pride about the innovative work the city has done to make unusable land useful, increase urban density, and collaborate with businesses to move big projects forward.
Mayor Preston spoke with real regret about his decision not to run for the 2026-30 term. He spoke fondly of his council as one of the best and most collaborative teams he’s ever worked with, and acknowledged that he had originally intended to continue as mayor until the doors open at PowerCo. But with thanks to his wife Stephanie for her support, he shared how much he’s looking forward to retirement. His nod to the many roles Karen Vecchio continues to play in her community underscored how community service often continues well beyond the end of an elected term – sometimes more so once those Monday meeting nights aren’t spoken for.
With as much thoughtful deliberation as Preston has humour, Mayor Grant Jones walked the lunch group through the highlights of Southwold’s term, and especially 2025. He thanked MPP Rob Flack for his tireless support, noting that $59M in grant support for such a tiny community is virtually unheard of, but fired gentle shots at the recent provincial funding model, remarking that forcing communities to fight against one another for resources and attention rather than distributing funds equitably undermines sustainable capital planning and healthy inter-community relationships.
Although Mayor Jones did not remark on his intentions for next term, he shared Preston’s sentiment about his council, that his council is a team coming from a variety of different experience sets, but unified in their commitment to the best community they can build.
Mayor Sloan, who will be wrapping up his first term on a municipal council, spoke about the things he’s learned over the past three years. He said that “people can be mean as hell,” and that sometimes differing viewpoints are helpful, and sometimes they’re a real challenge. In the end though, he assured the room that the good days outweigh the bad, and said he would encourage any person considering it to run for their municipal council.
As far as Central Elgin’s progress, Mayor Sloan reflected that he thinks town halls and mayor’s office hours have been great for encouraging community-council lines of communication, that our new in-house planning services have the potential to improve our level of service, and external partnerships like our recent service agreement with the YMCA continue to respond to residents’ needs as well. He spoke with enthusiasm about the development of the hospital lands.
With eight more months of term, there’s still lots of time to get more done, for the mayors as well as those of us working with them at their horseshoes. But we’ll have to hear those reports next year from a new set of faces at the podium. Thank you to Mayors Jones, Preston, and Sloan for the work you’ve done for the Elgin–St. Thomas community. I wish you all the best in what the next term brings.