Greater Napanee Mayor reflects on successes, challenges, and 'fun,' and looks ahead at 2025

"Fun” isn’t a word that gets thrown around much when talking politics, but it is one Greater Napanee Mayor Terry Richardson uses often.

When Richardson took time on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, to talk about his tenure as mayor so far, he used the word fun 21 times in 40 minutes. This isn’t to say that nothing serious was discussed, rather it simply points to the way he does his job. Richardson doesn’t think of himself as a politician; he calls himself a retired police officer. 

“And police officers are first and foremost problem solvers,” he says.

One gets the sense the mayor enjoys helping people solve problems.

Richardson had served one full term as councillor for Ward 4 before being acclaimed as mayor on election night in October 2022. His first two years have seen a fair share of problems, and homelessness tops the list. Growing up here, he says, he never expected to see homeless people in Napanee.

“There's lots of us that are born and raised here, and we never expected to see what we saw in Toronto 25, 30 years ago. But it's happening. It's finding us, right? And there's no easy answer for that,” says the mayor.

Napanee being the lower tier in a two-tier government, social housing is Lennox and Addington County’s responsibility, not the municipality’s, he says, “But folks are living in our parks, so it becomes our responsibility.”

Policing has helped him look at the problem from multiple points of view. He says that about 20 to 30 years ago, people with mental health and addiction issues began to inundate the judicial system. 

"They didn't belong there,” Richardson points out, but “a lot of the mental health infrastructure closed, and so they ended up with no place to go, and then as the last stop, they ended up in the judicial system.”

He knows that as a lower-tier municipality, Greater Napanee cannot control that more significant issue, but he feels a responsibility to mitigate it. That’s where police training helps him to look at what he and the municipality can do instead of dwelling on what they can’t do, he explains.

“The trick to success is to stay in our lane and to do the things we have control over,” Richardson says, giving this example: “As municipal leaders, we can't venture off into the drug problem, right?" But social services and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) are available, he says, "and we maintain a good relationship with them.”

Ultimately, he sees his job as making the municipality a better place for everyone who lives here.

“At least in my humble opinion, our job is to make it a healthy, affordable, and vibrant community that people want to come to. If we stay in our lane [and] work on those things, we'll attract people to build houses here and the services that come with that,” Richardson shares.

All of these things help attract business to Napanee, he says. 

“We update our infrastructure and we attract business here because industry --- small or large businesses --- they haul the mail as far as paying taxes and things, so we want to bring that here,” Richardson continues.

“But we also want to ensure that that it's a safe place. So, we want to have a good relationship with our police and stay positive... and say, ‘Listen, we can't ignore the problem, because it's there'... but we stay in our lane and build this municipality as healthy and affordable as we can.”

He offers that municipal government can advocate to upper-tier governments for help with all of these things: “We don’t have control over our upper tier or our policing, but we will assist them and help them and urge them to help us out."

With rumours of an early provincial election currently swirling around, does that mean things might change? Richardson says no.

"The only thing that might change is how we talk to them, because every new government has different thoughts on how things should be dealt with. But ultimately, we need to be non-partisan and represent everyone," the mayor says.

The Napanee mayor was candid in expressing how he feels about the current council's term thus far.

"It is fun right now because of all the successes we've had. We've had some bumps in the road, but we've had a lot of successes," Richardson says.

“As a municipality, we dipped our toes into probably some places that we really didn't need to, but we felt obligated to help our citizens get primary health care... and we're sort of on the cutting edge of that! We are now in a position to say, 'If you move to Napanee, you're going to get your primary health care.'"

The Town recently partnered with Kingston Community Health Centres and the Napanee Area Community Health Centre to create the Greater Napanee Health Home, offering ongoing comprehensive primary care through a team-based model. Nurse practitioners are supported by nurses, a team of allied health professionals, and specialist physicians. Together, the dedicated team supports people’s health and wellness through every stage of their lives. The Health Home model of care is being introduced by the Frontenac Lennox & Addington Ontario Health Team (FLA OHT) across the region. A rostering event in November 2024 aimed to attach everyone in Greater Napanee to primary care.

"There's nobody else In the province or the country, really, I don't think, that has the ability to do that," Richardson observes. "And for a municipality like us, it's a real drawing card... That’s going to make our job as politicians --- which I never really classified myself as; I'm a retired policeman, right? I'm not a politician --- but it makes our job at the political level easier because we've got something that will draw people here."

Another highlight Richardson is happy to mention is the expansion of Goodyear Napanee, which he describes as “really exciting because they're going to create 200 more jobs, but as important as creating 200 jobs is that there's 1,000 jobs... that we are going to keep here.”

The fact that a multinational company has decided to continue to invest in the town is a huge win, he notes, saying, "That's the important thing for us. They're going to be here for the foreseeable future. It's our biggest employer, and it's a huge tax base.”

Richardson says he loves to just take a drive around town every month, sometimes weekly: “I just drive around town and just look at the stuff that's going on. It's really kind of cool.”

There are multiple construction projects on his town tour, among them the Lennox and Addington General Hospital’s new long-term care facility and the new Village Green long term care facility. 

“They are both huge, massive, and they're creating all kinds of long-term care beds,” says Richardson.

“And you can't talk about that Village Green complex without talking about the mobile home community that’s that's going in [next to it on Drive-In Road]. That's going to create housing that's more attainable. They're smaller, but it's really neat... because they're going to expand in behind and around the new long-term care home and make a community there around it."

Also, Richardson notes that there is a brand new subdivision coming on the east end of town on Old Hamburg Road. 

“Once in a while I drive by there just to see the progress that [Best and Bash] are making, and you know, they're investing a lot of money into infrastructure up there. We all realize that site is difficult, but they're not afraid of it,” the mayor expresses.

Regarding infrastructure, he says, “all you've got to do is drive down Centre Street, and if you've been here for more than two weeks, you realize that Centre Street is inundated from the Highway 401 down to downtown." This sign of progress also points to future infrastructure needs.

“We're looking at an extension which will take you right into the new subdivision in the west end,” Richardson says, explaining that some grant money became available, so the Town recently purchased the road allowance [at the end of Alkenbrack Street] and applied for the grant to work on adding the road. 

“Whether that infrastructure is built in the next two, three, four years, it doesn't matter. It's there," he notes.

“We've got to be cognizant of day-to-day stuff, but we also have to understand that there's a future and plan ahead."

Richardson has overseen a major human resources overhaul over the last year, hiring a new Town CAO and then overseeing several departmental changes in leadership. He says his experiences in policing with Peel Regional Police and the OPP have helped him understand that working in a big organization requires a good team and a team effort, "even the human resources."

"Human resources --- unless you work in a big organization, you just don't understand," Richardson says. "However, it was a big part of what we did in policing... and human resources is an important part of municipal politics... People think [the police] just arrest people and throw people in jail. Not necessarily. You're a problem solver, which is parallel to what you're doing in municipal politics."

He then applies the concept of problem solving directly to Kingstonist.

“What your organization has done is said, 'Listen, everything else is going this way,'" Richardson says, pointing in one direction, "and [Kingstonist] looked at it and said, 'This is maybe the direction we should go, to find our niche,'” he concludes, pointing in the other direction.

This takes the conversation itself in a bit of a different direction. 

“The media is an important part of who we are and what we do,” Richardson says with a thoughtful pause. “What sort of scares me a little bit [is that] people need to get the news, they need to get accurate information about what's going on --- and when the sources of that information, being mainstream media, start to die or go away, where do they go to look for that accurate information?”

 The mayor concludes the thought, “So it's interesting that the Kingstonist looked forward and saw this, because the public needs to get accurate local information. I mean, I used to love watching the six o'clock news, but now that has sort of changed.”

He says that often social media gets things wrong or serves up biased opinions about things that are overly negative, noting, “You can only take in small doses.”

In the “real world” he sees things occur more positively than online, he says. “So it's interesting that the Kingstonist looked forward and saw [the decline of local news sources], because the public needs to get accurate local information.”

He goes on, “But where I really get a feel of how we're doing is when I go to the grocery store, when I go play hockey at the rink, when I go to the drugstore to pick something up, or if I'm walking downtown, when I'm getting gas: you get a completely different picture than what you get online. People come up, they say, ‘Hey, are you the mayor? You know what? You're doing a good job here.' I say, 'I appreciate that.'”

And, Richardson remarks, it is very seldom that people approach him with anger or resentment. However, "when you're going to the grocery store for a bag of milk, you have always got to plan for about 45 minutes,” he laughs, recalling some long but productive conversations in the produce aisle. He takes pride in helping people find the municipal staff who can solve their problems.

Even with issues that seem extremely minor, he says,"It's important to that person, so it's important to me."

“It's a really fun, exciting time in this municipality, and we are very fortunate because we've got everything that we need to succeed. Because we're an older municipality, we're very balanced: we've got residential stuff, we've got commercial stuff, we've got industrial stuff, we have agriculture, we're a farming community, right? But all these things need to complement each other as they grow, and if you don't have that balance, it's going to make it tough to run municipalities."

Richardson likens the situation to hockey, his other great love. 

"The rink's full when you're trying to win. There's no problem selling tickets. But when you're in last place, nobody's going to the game, right? And so it's the same idea as that... at least in my humble opinion," the Napanee mayor opines.