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 have been a Kamloopsian for almost 50 years. My amazing wife and I have been married for 29+ years, and we are blessed with three incredible young adults. I am an active charter member of a local Rotary club and twice president. I started my own business 23 years ago and it’s where I still work today as a health care professional. I love to be outside, cycling, skiing, gardening, hunting, fishing or hiking. I also love cooking, mechanics, woodworking or renovating.
I am running for council again because I have some unfinished business I want to see through and I feel I have just started to hit my stride with fulfilling the role as a city councillor. I would like to see the Red Bridge become a reality as this has been an item on my plate for advocacy and public relations since I was the deputy mayor in September 2024. Recently at government meetings in Vancouver, I met with every minister responsible for making the budget decision to fund the Red Bridge rebuild, plus their senior staff and the premier to ensure they know our communities and region need the Red Bridge rebuilt.
I have also been working on a community Forest submission with TRU, TteS, and the TNRD so that we can FireSmart the forests around Kamloops and reduce our city tax rate through a shared benefit agreement. I would like to finish the goal of getting our future tax rates down to around the Municipal Price Index without draining our reserves. This term I have inquired about the return of some past community legacy events, like First Night (New Years Eve) and Spoolmak Days, while others inquired about the return of the Cattle Drive. All are worth further work. Lastly, I would love to see more of the community trails, pathways and multi-use paths linked and grown. Ultimately, I want to see the progress we made on community safety, security, economic growth, health and livability continue to progress and improve.
What do you think is the biggest issue facing the City of Kamloops and how would you use your elected position to address it?
Personally, I think there is a community mistrust of government and its functionality, but in my opinion that is driven by small, vocal groups amplifying negativity for reasons I do not understand. I would like to address it through a new improved city website that is modern, inviting, easy to navigate and has some “excitement,” including video clips of work projects, or simple explanations on “how to’s.” I would like to see the return of the public inquiries during council meetings, and I would love to see a town crier on the front steps of City Hall every Wednesday at noon following the Tuesday meetings where the crier reads the “exciting” summary of the previous meetings’ great work.
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?
I have voiced my concerns repeatedly over the past four years to the Minister(s) of Municipal Affairs for fundamental upgrades to the Community Charter so that violations by elected officials have substantive and real consequences for Codes of Conduct violations, breaches overseen by the OIPC BC, WorkSafeBC, and the Community Charter itself. All of our bylaws, laws and acts work reasonably well so long as the person follows, adheres to, and respects them and others. When they don’t, in my opinion, I can say from personal experience this term, it is not good governance. This term has shown me that there are very little consequences to an elected official behaving badly and very little others can do to reign in a person who chooses to disregard everything.
That stated, I can only speak for myself. It is only myself that I have control of. I pledge to do as I have for the better part of this past term going into the next term, and that is, have an open mind, respect others, work collaboratively with everyone, be kind on the person and hard on the subject matter, ask good questions, listen and listen some more, consider the alternative and options, read my oath of office before every meeting to ground myself, think before I speak and remember that it is not about me. It’s about all of us. I am there to represent all the city and its people. Those who paid attention to my time on council over the past four years would probably agree that my behaviour and track record as a city councillor is worthy of electing me again.
Considering recent years of large municipal tax increases in Kamloops, how would you address the city’s tax rate going forward?
The above average tax rates in the first three years of our term were related to prior council decisions to draw down reserves, not deal with costly decisions on issues like Noble Creek Irrigation subsidies and infrastructure maintenance, building the required RCMP building and other capital projects. So a priority of mine for this new term would be to ensure that our staff work towards ensuring our future municipal tax rate annually is stabilized at a rate equal to, or closely similar to the Municipal Price Index without draining reserves.
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?
Here is what I have learned this term about the AAP. The AAP is a provision in the Community Charter, Section 86, with a specific reference to section 94 [public notice (or requirements to engage public)]. It is a means for communities to directly engage the citizens about a proposed borrowing bylaw intended to long-term borrowing needed to advance capital projects, acquire lands, etc. It is a provincially regulated process that has been around since the 1960s and unchanged since 2003. The City of Kamloops has used it many, many times over the years, as have many other communities. Not all AAPs fail to reach sufficiency, and so some AAPs fail too.
The differences between an AAP and a referendum lie in the timing, voter threshold and voting opportunities. They do not differ in the elector eligibility, geographic area, notice (public consultation /education) or the Inspector of Municipalities oversight on the question(s) or audit reporting requirements (yearly). The provincial government’s guide to AAPs has cover photos of a recreation centre, a library, a city hall, a firehall and some capital builds.
There is a paragraph in the guide that suggests issues that are significant in financial cost to tax payers, or that may be controversial, or that the scale of the project might be better to go to direct assent(referendum).
The Performing Arts Centre and multiplex/library were items identified by lots of public consultation and engagements that formed the Recreation Master Plan (RMP) for the City of Kamloops (circa. 2019). The RMP identified the PAC as the highest priority. All nine of us who were elected ran on a platform of wanting to action the document. In my opinion, that was direct public assent (we all got elected) and a mandate. I have met far more citizens with positive views than negative ones on the PAC and the multiplex/library. Though the negative ones have been very vocal and, in some cases, they actioned their displeasure with legal challenges that they lost, and the delays likely cost us more than $10 million dollars in inflationary increases.
So to finally answer your question here. If a project/opportunity is “new” and requires a significant borrowing bylaw (more than $100 million) to fund it, has no apparent public appetite then I would support a direct assent via referendum, regardless of the fact that it would have a much higher cost to undertake. However, if a similar valued project, possibly higher, were needed as critical infrastructure and/or the majority of council members (inclusive of the mayor) ran on a mandate to action that item then I would give consideration to an AAP given it requires less time to complete and time is money. Remember that the provincially mandated education and engagement and financial oversight is the same for an AAP as it is for a referendum.
What are your thoughts on communication between the City of Kamloops and its residents? Are there areas of improvement you’d like to see?
Let me state my opinion as this. Clear, concise communication is the key to any discussion or transfer of information, but it requires all participants to pay attention and engage. Our world is full of distractions. People prioritize things differently than others. Cell phones and social media are addictive and are often fraught with misinformation, media algorithms that feed more of the same back to the user to the point that a person can actually believe misinformation is real and true. Lastly, people have become conditioned to expect more immediate, short communications.
So getting the message out in a form that people will pay attention to is hard, especially if it is not something they are interested in, it’s mundane or boring (like governance is) and worse if it requires attention longer than a minute or two.
I think we have to keep using more types of media messaging to capture the different groups who pay attention to that form. Perhaps we should have a person reprise the role of a historic town crier and read a council news proclamation from the front steps of city hall at noon the day after a city hall meeting. We could record it and broadcast it on various media types. It is different enough that people across many media interests might actually pay attention to it because it is so different. It also might put Kamloops back on the map for a positive reason.
