Ahead of the Oct. 17 municipal election, CFJC Today asked candidates for Kamloops City Council to complete a questionnaire, offering voters the chance to evaluate their candidacies.
QUESTIONNAIRE:
Describe yourself, your professional background, and why you’re running for public office in Kamloops?
I’m born and raised in Kamloops, living just off Singh Street and then Westsyde while going to school at the Kamloops Christian School on the North Shore until graduation. That foundation instilled a sense of community involvement that would echo throughout the rest of my life. I’ve been a volunteer firefighter for the past nine years, a volunteer board director for the Association of Interior Realtors where I just finished serving my term as president. My career as a realtor gives me professional insight into land management, zoning, and housing in general, which makes up 30 per cent of our province’s GDP. My wife is a physician in Kamloops, so our pillow talk is well informed about conversation on the main issues our city is facing in affordable housing along with mental health and addiction issues. My advocacy over my time with our Real Estate Association has been founded on public protection, avoiding unintended consequences from legislation change and working with the provincial and federal government to work towards affordable housing to help Canadians achieve the dream of one day owning a home. My life has been, and will continue to be, focused on these main issues that face Kamloops residents whether or not I am elected to council. To me this work isn’t a fad; it will be what I look back on and can say I was proud of being a cause of notable change.
What do you think is the biggest issue facing the City of Kamloops and how would you use your elected position to address it?
The biggest issue facing our community at this time is community safety. While assisting in physician recruitment to our city, I’ve witnessed first-hand this be a deterrent to attracting our so needed doctors. More and more residents are feeling unsafe in our beautiful city and with the unpredictability of what drugs can do to a person, we need to find a way to actually help this population. The past approach has clearly not been working as we continue to see the degradation of our unhoused and the growing sentiment from the public. My approach to all problem-solving opportunities is founded on data driven decision making backed by critical thinking. Should I be successful in being tasked with leading our community, I would like to establish baseline neighborhood data including any key metrics that can be tracked. These would be items like current crime rates, bylaw call out rates, citizen complaints to the city and any other data we have access to. A mentor once told me, “What we can track, we can change.” Having factual data on what types of shelter centers are working for the public as well as the residents of these centers leads to better quality of life for both demographics. This creates opportunities for collaboration and accountability based on data and allows us to make incremental improvements. With this issue being a North America wide issue, I think that if someone has the quick and easy solution then they are the next billionaire.
Following a term highlighted by infighting and tension at city hall that impacted Kamloops’ public image, how would you ensure civil discourse and good governance would take place between yourself, fellow elected officials and city staff?
The strength of our country and what makes it so desirable is the founding principal of democracy. My experience in leading a board of directors instilled the fact that difference of opinion leads to the best decisions. The strength of a city council is the diverse thought from many different walks of life. Speaking respectfully to one another goes a long way and I would say sincere curiousity in listening and trying to understand a colleague’s thoughts creates empathy for their point of view and that is truly the first step. Prior formal training in personality identification for improved communication has aided in my ability to navigate difficult challenges that inevitably come up when in a leadership position like a city council. My organization had formal governance training on a yearly basis due to elections being held yearly. This, along with creating policy, helps ensure proper process occurs when emotions may want to make stray decisions. I’m proud to say that in my previous role along with my team, we were able to create a first of its kind “Bullying and Harassment” policy within our province for our industry.
Considering recent years of large municipal tax increases in Kamloops, how would you address the city’s tax rate going forward?
I look at this as a mathematical question. If we don’t add any additional services or amenities compared to a previous year’s budget, we still have to deal with increases in materials and labour at a very minimum typically. This is a very simplified example, but in theory your taxes would need to go up to keep everything identical to the previous year but then account for higher fuel prices, increased lumber costs, union wage negotiations, etc. With major projects like the PAC and future RCMP building, I think we will continue to see taxes rise. The one saving grace is that we are at a key point in history with technology to be able to create mass efficiencies with things like AI. Being able to automate many repetitive tasks will allow city staff to do what they do best rather than getting bogged down with administrative work. Making cuts to things like flowers and grass and replacing with beautified xeriscaping reduces maintenance, reduces water consumption and makes our city more FireSmart. Shifts like this will help create balance and reduce the tax increases we will see if for nothing else than due to inflation.
As major infrastructure projects are on the horizon in Kamloops, how would you prefer the city go about gaining the electorate’s approval – via referendum or the alternative approval process (AAP)? Why?
I think it is easy to look back on the public sentiment from the previous AAP on the PAC. The public has been vocal about their dissatisfaction of the AAP being used in that case. Moving forward and listening to what the public has said, I think we have the direction to use referendums for certain decisions. My personal thoughts are that as long as there is a lot of public engagement in a referendum then we can continue that route, but if the voter turnout continues to be extremely low then we have a fiduciary duty to the majority of residents to be fiscally responsible and use a less expensive process like an AAP if the majority of residents seem apathetic to future projects. Again, this is what I am envisioning as a process of referendums being used in the future and reassessing after that point.
What are your thoughts on communication between the City of Kamloops and its residents? Are there areas of improvement you’d like to see?
My experience in leading a not-for-profit membership-based organization instilled the fact that the organization exists to serve the membership (citizens). This is a form of data gathering with the goal to forever be improving. I’d like to see the creation of a program that I thought of to solve the issue of residents not being heard. The idea of “Coffee with a Councillor” would allow a resident to meet with a council member to voice their thoughts, issues, concerns and solutions in a non-intimidating, non-formal environment. With technology like AI readers these days, you can turn it on for the meeting. It will create notes, you then add it to a file folder on a computer, take six months of meeting summaries, and ask AI to give you common themes and viable actionable steps. This takes the time of the council member and maybe five minutes of copying and pasting a file folder to get the results. To me, this is low hanging fruit that is easy to implement and can be very effective in ensuring residents are heard.
