About Me
My name is Jeff Bell. I've lived in New Hamburg for nine years with my family and I love this community. I was born and raised in Mississauga. I watched that city grow as farmland gave way to subdivisions, strip malls, and industrial development. A few pockets of small-town character held on, but the city I grew up in changed a lot. It's part of why I think carefully about growth now. I'm not against it, but I pay attention to how it happens.
My wife and I started looking for a smaller community where we could raise our daughter and put down new roots. After a lot of exploring, we found New Hamburg. It felt like home. Moving to a small town where we didn't know anyone was still daunting. We moved in on a Tuesday. That Thursday, I started hosting trivia at Scran & Dram. I couldn't think of a better way to become part of a new community than to put myself out there, with a mic, every single week. I'm glad I did.
My career was in tech, including 13 years at Microsoft. Much of my work involved solving complex problems, leading teams, listening to customers, and advocating for them inside a very large organization. I learned to ask questions, challenge assumptions, work through disagreement, and keep pushing until there was a solution that made sense.
In 2020, those trivia nights turned into music bingo nights. Then, in March of that year, everything came to a halt. I'd worked from home for years, but suddenly most people were stuck at home too. People were bored and isolated, so I decided to take my game online. It started with neighbours and friends. Before long, more than 500 people were joining every Thursday night. In 2025, after 13 years at Microsoft, I was laid off. Rather than return to the corporate world, I decided to see what I could build from the business that had started here. Today, we run music bingo in 14 locally owned pubs across Southern Ontario and regularly host corporate events. It all started in New Hamburg, from something as simple as finding a way to bring people together.
Like a lot of residents, I hadn't had much reason to follow council closely. Life was busy running a business and raising a family. That changed when I read that Waterloo Regional Police wanted to install surveillance cameras on township-owned infrastructure. Something about it didn't sit right, so I started digging. I watched previous council meetings, read the reports, and looked for evidence that the cameras would actually solve a problem in Wilmot. I couldn't find it. Provincial funding was available, but there was no clear evidence of a local need.
That wasn't good enough for me, so I downloaded six years of WRPS occurrence data and did my own analysis. I delegated to council against the cameras and presented what I found. Council ultimately voted against moving forward with the bylaw.
I was pleased with the outcome, but the experience left me thinking about how much better local decisions can be when residents show up, ask questions, and bring evidence with them.
Council makes decisions that will shape this community for years to come. Those decisions deserve people who are willing to listen, ask hard questions, dig into the facts, and explain how they reached their conclusions.
I owe a lot to this community, and I'd be honoured to have the chance to serve it.
