Page 4 – Wolfgang Schoor As Mayor Compared To Other Candidates
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What Wolfgang Schoor Brings To City Hall Is Two Different Kinds Of Experiences
All Thunder Bay mayoral candidates come from very different backgrounds. Some have spent years in municipal politics. Others come from business, community and non-profit organizations, or municipal administration.
Wolfgang Schoor comes from a different place: decades of hands-on experience building, managing, inspecting and operating the physical environments in which people work and live.
TRADITIONAL MUNICIPAL EXPERIENCE: Candidates such as Trevor Giertuga and Aldo Ruberto bring direct experience in municipal politics and City Council. That means familiarity with council procedures.
BUSINESS EXPERIENCE: Candidates such as Peter Diedrich and Moe Comuzzi bring experience in real estate and investment.
COMMUNITY & SOCIAL-SERVICE EXPERIENCE: Candidates such as Volker Kromm and Peter Panetta bring experience rooted in social services, youth programs and community engagement.
MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION: Doug Vincent brings a career in public service, including as a City licensing manager.
THE SCHOOR DIFFERENCE
CONSTRUCTION • HOUSING • INFRASTRUCTURE • PROJECT MANAGEMENT•PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Wolfgang Schoor brings more than 45 years of experience in construction and building sciences as a university graduate and a certified carpenter from Germany and Canada, including construction management, public safety, quality assurance and quality control, cost control and housing operations.
His professional experience has involved dealing with the physical realities of buildings and living environments, not simply discussing them as policy issues.
That provides a perspective centred on questions such as:
How do we build it?
What will it cost?
How do we maintain it?
How do we make it safer?
How do we improve the quality?
How do we get the project completed?
NOT A CHOICE BETWEEN “EXPERIENCED” AND “INEXPERIENCED”
The important distinction is not whether one candidate has experience and another does not. They have different kinds of experience.
| EXPERIENCE | CANDIDATES |
|---|---|
| Municipal government | Giertuga, Ruberto |
| Business | Diedrich, Comuzzi |
| Community & social services | Kromm, Panetta |
| Municipal administration | Vincent |
| Construction, housing & project management, public health and safety, crime reduction | Schoor |
Each background brings a different perspective to the mayor’s office. The question for Thunder Bay voters is:
What kind of experience do you want represented at City Hall?
HOUSING: FROM POLICY TO THE PHYSICAL REALITY
Housing is one of many areas where Schoor’s professional and personal experience intersects particularly closely with his campaign. His proposals include:
- Tiny-home clusters and pocket neighbourhoods
- Returning vacant or unused rental units to service
- Landlord and tenant education
- Temporary shelter options
- Examining the decline of lodging-house accommodation
His experience operating Villa House also gives him decades of direct experience with housing and people living in challenging circumstances. This makes his approach different from simply identifying homelessness and housing affordability as policy problems. For details on his spin of resolution review the following document:
Click to Download Document: Presentation to the Housing Taskforce for the Mayor Ken Boshcoff, 2024
Schoor’s emphasis is on the physical housing environment itself, and on practical mechanisms for creating, restoring and managing housing.
SCHOOR’S PROPOSITION
Wolfgang Schoor is not asking voters to view him as a career politician. His proposition is different:
Bring someone to the mayor’s office who has spent decades outside City Hall actually building, managing, inspecting, repairing and studying the environments in which people live.
That experience does not answer every municipal question. But it does bring a perspective that is distinct in the current mayoral field. And Schoor should be prepared to demonstrate how that experience can be translated into specific municipal actions, realistic budgets, measurable outcomes and workable cooperation with Council and City administration.