After running for
Oshawa City Council in 1985 and losing by a margin of just seven votes, Diamond won election to council in 1988. She ran for mayor in the 1991 municipal election, defeating incumbent mayor Allan Mason. Her campaign focused on a controversial downtown redevelopment project championed by Mason, which Diamond dismissed as "unrealistic, unmanageable and unfinanceable." She was not opposed to the redevelopment in principle, and later supported a revised version of the proposal, but objected to several aspects of Mason's proposed financing and implementation plans. One of her first stated goals as mayor was the establishment of a
university in the city, a goal which was attained when the
University of Ontario Institute of Technology was chartered in 2002. She lobbied for improvements to the city's transportation network, including the improvement of
Ontario Highway 401, the extension of
Ontario Highway 407 and the expansion of the
Oshawa Airport. She also spearheaded the creation of a
city manager position at Oshawa City Hall, and tried to avoid or minimize municipal tax increases. She was reelected to a second term as mayor in 1994. Priorities during her second term included economic diversification, and the revitalization of the city's struggling downtown core. During this era, she began to attract some controversy for endorsing a plan to amalgamate Oshawa with the neighbouring towns of
Whitby and
Courtice, and for her handling of an unconfirmed rumour that the board of the
Canadian Automotive Museum was planning to move the facility from Oshawa to
Toronto. Diamond was re-elected to a third term as mayor in the 1997 municipal election, and to a fourth term in the 2000 municipal election. In the 2003 municipal election, Diamond faced allegations that her style as mayor had been abrasive, that her management of the city's downtown revitalization program was failing and that her focus on freezing municipal tax rates was no longer serving the city's changing needs. ==References==