Ahead of the Oct. 15 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 occupation and your historical connection to the Kamloops area.
Kamloops is my hometown. Grew up here and I’ll be buried here. This is my town and I don’t like the direction it’s taking. I’m reminded by the quote “If Not You, Then Who? If Not Now, Then When?” Graduated from UBC, became a teacher by profession.
What differentiates you from the other candidates?
I am in no means impressed with, let alone intimidated, by city staff. I don’t like the idea of staff running the city and elected officials as lackeys to the city manager. I’ve read city reports and I’m shocked at the amount of errors, the superficial analysis, and at times outright lies staff deliver; as evidence, I submit the BS they’ve spewed about the bylaw department. Where is council? Their role is that of oversight yet they roll over each time management exerts themselves. I’m not a lap dog. I’ll fight for our city and don’t particularly care for the career advancement of city staff.
What do you think is the best way to resolve disagreements or conflicts with your peers, those in a different department or those in a different jurisdiction?
I’ve always thought dialogue, common courtesy, the ability to compromise, and time were the best ways to solving disagreements. Every battle doesn’t have to be a zero-sum event, we should be able to agree to disagree without making enemies. Arguments happen, discussions become heated, and hostilities develop. These are all normal in human interactions whether it be with a spouse, a work mate, or a foreign adversary. All can be overcome by simply talking them through, using common courtesy, with a little compromise and time to calm down along with thinking of the others perspective.
What do you think is the biggest issue facing the City of Kamloops and how would use your elected position to address it?
The most obvious in your face issue of our city, like many other cities, is the homeless/opioid and corresponding street crime dilemma which has reached intolerable proportions. As important of an issue that this is, I believe city hall spending is of greater import for no other reason than we simply don’t have the financial means to tackle the street issues adequately because city hall is grossly misspending our dollars and in doing so, only prolongs the street issues. We find ourselves to be amongst the poorest of midsized cities in the province, as such, we have less ability to cope with the many issues we are facing. And at the root of this spending issue is salaries. We spend/waste $10 million more on salaries per year than other mid-sized comparable cities. This simply isn’t sustainable if we are to move forward, we have far greater issues such as the street entrench as an example to spend those dollars on rather than outsiders’ fat salaries at city hall.
How do you plan to involve Kamloops residents in your decision-making?
We find ourselves in a pretty deep hole and we’re not going to get out of it by following a bunch of carpet baggers who think we can spend our way out. We’re run by a group of “out of towners” who have no historical connection to the city and don’t value input from locals. As a local, this angers me. I believe we need far more citizen input and far less closed-door meetings in city hall. It seems intuitively obvious to me that to instill pride in your neighbourhood, then communities need to allow neighbourhoods to be self-determinative. We ought to give neighbourhood associations more autonomy in the running of their neighbourhoods and parks. Let these associations decide what amenities they have in their parks, what programs they run, what fees – if any – they charge.
I also believe in a “hire Kamloops first policy”, those that grew up here already have roots in the city, they want to see the city succeed so why aren’t we encouraging them to take on leadership in our development? Why is it that we have no local representation in senior management? I grew up with kids who have become provincial court judges, PhD’s, surgeons, leaders of industry and science, yet we can’t find one to hire in a senior management role in their own hometown. Nonsense.
What does a sustainable future for Kamloops and area look like to you and what does it need from mayor and council?
We need to have an open and honest discussion of what our greatest assets are and how best to capitalize on them. For example, we are a hub city, we ought to be capitalizing on our road and particularly rail transport infrastructure along with our modest land prices in becoming the interior’s transport and logistics capital.
We ought to be taking advantage of our flowing rivers and high-water table in enhancing geothermal energy for our city. Moreover, as the sunniest area in the province (aside from the East Kootenays) we should be capitalizing on our solar energy capacities to a far greater degree. The combined assets of our geothermal and solar should be used to allow us to become the first self-sustaining city in the province. It’s obvious that the future is in clean energy, other jurisdictions around the world are capitalizing, why can’t we, what are we waiting for? We need to stop thinking small and start thinking big so we can be first together.
Our tourism industry is rather dormant in comparison to the Okanagan which is thriving largely due to the advantages/opportunities its many lakes provide. Yet we have a freshwater lake not five minutes as the bird flies from city hall that is less populated today than it was 100 years ago. It just seems counterproductive to continue ignoring the most gifted geographical location in the city. We’ve been sitting on the fence for 40 years doing nothing. We need to be active participants in the Tranquille on the Lake development. This area can be a self-sustaining environmentally clean energy agri-residential-tourism destination. This is by far our greatest asset and can drive the economy for the next 100 years, so let’s get off our ass’s and make this happen. As Horace Greeley often said, “go west and prosper young man”.
