From Family to World: The Gardener's Lesson on Service
A short true story of Andrii Zvorygin about how service starts close to home and grows outward into care for neighbours, community, food security, and the common good.
The Three Pillars
Transparency
Residents should be able to see what decisions are being made, what services cost, and how city spending connects to real results. Andrii has already worked toward this through helpos.ca, which makes Owen Sound agendas, transcripts, and local articles easier to access so residents can decide when to attend a meeting, follow what happened, and understand the outcome.
Participation
A stronger city is built when residents can take part in caring for their neighbourhoods. As service, infrastructure, policing, machinery, insurance, fuel, and material costs rise, Owen Sound needs more civic capacity to maintain services while reducing pressure for property-tax increases.
Andrii’s participation model connects elected Ward Councillors, Local Representatives, and city-approved resident stewardship. Owen Sound would have seven wards, each represented by an elected Ward Councillor. Within each ward, smaller local areas would have a Local Representative who helps residents organize community connections and bring local priorities forward. Local Representatives help residents communicate with their Ward Councillor and create no additional level of government. Residents would have legal, safe, organized ways to help with cleanups, gardens, issue reporting, snow-neighbour support, safety walks, and other practical upkeep that strengthens the city.
Read more about participation.
Andrii has encouraged capable residents from across Owen Sound to consider serving as Ward Councillors and Local Representatives. Each person brings their own experience and connection to their part of the city.
Participants in Cooperative Local Leadership.
Compassion
Hard problems should be approached with forgiveness, love, respect, and compassion for everyone involved. The goal is to understand the needs, limits, and responsibilities on all sides, then work toward decisions that benefit people and the community over the long term.
Compassion in practice means more than kind words. It means practical pathways from homelessness, addiction, and isolation into stable housing, community, meaningful contribution, and recovery.
- Learn more about compassion.
- Housing, homelessness, and recovery strategy.
- Land, housing, and food resilience.
Candidate Facts
- Name: Andrii Zvorygin
- Running for: Mayor of Owen Sound
- Election: 2026 municipal election
- Location: Owen Sound, Ontario
- Focus areas: transparency, participation, compassion, ward and local representation, food security, housing, homelessness, and voluntary recovery
The Core Idea
Andrii’s campaign is about giving people a believable path forward: clearer local representation, practical ways to participate, affordable routes to land and housing, and compassionate recovery models rooted in community, purpose, food, and belonging.
Ward and local representation would make accountability easier to see. Shared stewardship would give residents practical ways to care for their streets, parks, neighbours, and local food systems. Community land trusts, food forest communities, and affordable rural communities could help younger generations, working families, seniors, growers, and people rebuilding their lives access homes, land, skills, and meaningful contribution.
Over the past several years, Andrii Zvorygin has communicated with Grey County mayors, deputy mayors, and staff about regional issues and opportunities. One result was Grey County’s decision to collectively administer rural and agricultural lands through the County planning system. As Mayor of Owen Sound, Andrii can bring forward a motion at Grey County Council to create a lawful pathway for Affordable Rural Communities across Grey County rural and agricultural lands.
The goal is a city where people know who represents them, know how to help, have credible paths to housing and land, and can build stable, connected lives together.
Interested in affordable rural communities?
We are developing a model for small, legal, serviced settlements where people could have affordable homes, secure long-term tenure, shared facilities, gardens, workshops, food production, firewood systems, family life, and small rural livelihoods. Housing could include insulated yurts, cabins, tiny homes, or modular dwellings. You can express interest for yourself or your children, or offer skills, land, tools, funding, or organizing support.
Experience and Qualifications
Andrii has lived in Owen Sound since 2015 and has spent years doing the practical work around local government, public systems, community infrastructure, communication, and food-producing resilience.
He brings hands-on experience directly relevant to the work of mayor: understanding City and County processes, communicating with residents, advocating to upper levels of government, and helping practical ideas move toward public action.
His background includes:
- IT and communication systems work with local organizations and businesses.
- Farming and tree nursery work focused on food security, edible landscapes, and long-term resilience.
- Direct interaction with Owen Sound and Grey County council and staff processes.
- Years of County-level civic involvement, including relationship-building, policy advocacy, and work to encourage cooperation and social cohesion.
- Service as treasurer for a federal campaign.
- Candidate interviews during provincial and federal elections.
- Advocacy to municipal, County, provincial, and federal governments on food security, housing, land use, local resilience, manufacturing capacity, and intergovernmental cooperation.
- Familiarity with local MPs, MPPs, ministries, public bodies, and advocacy channels, including work involving the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
- Building helpos.ca to make Owen Sound agendas, transcripts, meeting results, and local civic issues easier to follow.
- Service as treasurer of the Grey Bruce Makerspace, supporting local skills, tools, practical education, and community infrastructure.
- Helping strengthen the Grey Bruce Makerspace website and communications to reduce costs and support long-term sustainability.
- Hosting a monthly podcast where internationally recognized scientists and engineers present research on resource limits, energy transition, infrastructure, food security, and practical transition pathways, including guests whose work has appeared in leading journals such as Science and Nature and who have presented to the UN as well as other international and national bodies.
- Practical experience explaining complex systems in plain language so more people can understand and participate.
Through this work, Andrii has developed a practical understanding of:
- how public decisions are made;
- how City, County, provincial, and federal responsibilities fit together;
- which offices, ministries, representatives, and public bodies to contact for different issues;
- how communication gaps affect residents;
- how trust and social cohesion shape council effectiveness;
- how systems and infrastructure shape daily life;
- how budgets, tools, volunteers, and local organizations support community capacity;
- how food, housing, energy, land use, and local resilience connect;
- how global resource pressures can affect local costs, food systems, infrastructure, and municipal planning;
- how Owen Sound’s decisions fit into the wider Grey County region.
For the actual work of mayor, Andrii believes he brings the most relevant hands-on experience in the race.
Read the full article: The Most Relevant Experience for Mayor
Main Priorities
- Ward and local representation with clear responsibility.
- Transparent local budgets and service costs.
- More opportunities for residents to help care for and improve their neighbourhoods.
- Stronger local food production and distribution.
- Housing and land-use planning that helps families build stable lives.
- Regional infrastructure such as grain mills, food processing, cold storage, and farmer-to-market connections.
He supports planning around what land, food, water, energy, and infrastructure can realistically support.
Media
Watch recent videos and interviews from the campaign.
How to Pronounce Andrii Zvorygin
A short music video to help people pronounce Andrii Zvorygin's name and get a better sense of who he is as a candidate.
Interview with James O
A campaign interview filmed in the local history section of the Owen Sound & North Grey Union Public Library.
County-Level Leadership
The mayor represents Owen Sound at Grey County, where decisions about housing, roads, social services, land use, public health, and regional infrastructure affect daily life in the city. Andrii’s approach emphasizes practical coordination with neighbouring municipalities so Owen Sound can advocate clearly for local needs while helping strengthen the wider region.
Why Andrii Is Running
Many residents feel local decisions are too distant from neighbourhood realities. Andrii is running in the 2026 municipal election cycle to make city governance more transparent, more participatory, and more compassionate.
This campaign is based on shared stewardship: the idea that Owen Sound works better when residents have clearer ways to understand local needs, contribute their abilities, help care for the places where they live, and feel that they belong in the life of the city.
Andrii wants to help rebuild community cohesion by encouraging residents, neighbourhoods, city staff, council, local organizations, and neighbouring municipalities to work through challenges with respect and compassion for everyone involved.
He aims to build a practical civic culture where people feel heard, useful, and connected; where future council leadership can grow from neighbourhood experience; and where difficult decisions are made in a way that strengthens trust, belonging, and compassion for everyone involved.
Campaign Links
Frequently Asked Questions
How would Andrii address homelessness and substance use?
Andrii supports moving concentrated homelessness and meal services away from the downtown commercial core and toward accessible east-side locations near health care, transit, shopping, County services, and areas where many unsheltered residents already spend time. The transition would be developed with independent service providers through suitable facilities, leases, transit coordination, grants, and service agreements.
The goal is to maintain reliable access to food and support while reducing the concentration of homelessness-related activity downtown. This would help downtown streets, businesses, parks, and public spaces serve families, residents, visitors, and community events more effectively.
For people who choose recovery, Andrii supports voluntary land-based recovery communities combining stable shelter, recovery support, food growing, practical skills, relationships, responsibility, and a pathway into permanent affordable rural communities.
Read the housing, homelessness, and recovery strategy.
Who are affordable rural communities intended for?
Affordable rural communities are general affordable housing for seniors, young adults, workers, families, growers, and others seeking secure housing with access to land. Residents moving from intensive addiction recovery or similarly high-support pathways would form only a small minority within intentionally mixed communities, reducing institutionalization, stigma, social isolation, and ghettoization.
Learn more about affordable rural communities.
Who is Andrii Zvorygin?
Andrii Zvorygin is an Owen Sound resident and official candidate for Mayor of Owen Sound in the 2026 municipal election.
Is Andrii Zvorygin running for mayor of Owen Sound?
He is an official candidate for Mayor of Owen Sound in the 2026 municipal election cycle.
What is his platform?
His platform is built around transparency, participation, and compassion, with a focus on ward and local representation, affordable housing and land access, homelessness and voluntary addiction recovery, local food security, and practical long-term planning for Owen Sound.
What are his main priorities?
His main priorities are ward accountability, transparent local budgets, resident participation, affordable housing and land access, voluntary recovery pathways, stronger local food resilience, and downtown streets and public spaces that serve the whole community.