Interviewed by Megan Lambert.
Since many students will be voting for the first time, what would you describe as the role of municipal politics? What can a mayor actually do?
The mayor is first and foremost the chair of council, and the mayor only does get one vote. In the past I’ve served for three terms as the mayor of Mission, and I’ve always believed the mayor has an active role in economic development. The mayor should have the kinds of leadership qualities that keep a council accountable and on task and keep acrimony out of everything. It seems to me that the last three years have not been characterized by that. When I was mayor in my three previous terms as mayor, we would have extremely passionate arguments at times, we would vote on an issue and then move on to the next issue, and after the meeting it was all good to go for a beer or a coffee together of whatever, there was no ill will or ill feeling, and I believe I’m friends with every person I have served with on a council over those three terms, so that’s what part of being a mayor is, is being a communicator and in essence being a human relations-type person, a public relations-type person.
Who do you view as your constituents?
Every person that lives in Mission.
How will you receive the views of the entire population instead of just those most active around City Hall?
I have engaged in a pretty good social media campaign, I have a website, I am active on Facebook, I have a group that I’m working with to enhance my capability in social media. I have a newsletter that’s going to go out to every household by mail, and of course word of mouth, and I have supporters that also spread the message that I bring, so that’s kind of how you reach out. I mean, we don’t have radio or television and we don’t have the newspaper that reaches the broad masses.
Why did you choose not to run on a slate, and what do you think this means for the organization of municipal politics?
Because I have watched what happened for the past three years with the slate in Mission that I actually supported and helped to get elected. They disintegrated and it just, it’s become apparent to me that slates don’t work in smaller communities. They simply don’t work, the discussion of issues takes place behind closed doors, you don’t have an opportunity as the public to hear arguments made publicly by independent people, which I now believe gives you the best decisions. The slate that was there for the last three years was characterized by public fighting with each other, and it motioned a lack of confidence in the mayor by four members of council. So, slates in my opinion are not something that would be desirable for a small community.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
One of the problems I guess is that for the most part, the people who intend to run for council or mayor would be a generation or two distant from the generation that’s just coming on and could vote but doesn’t. And honestly, I don’t know exactly how you would fix that, because a part of that is how much time you have available. And when you’re in your 20s and you’re in your early 30s, generally speaking you’re starting to get going on a career, you’re starting a family, you’re very busy, you’re trying to advance yourself in your career, and so the time it takes to sit on a council isn’t there. A lot of young people really seem to take to better communication. I think with social media, if the municipality develops a much better, much stronger social media presence, that may engage the younger generation. It’s clear to me, I had 21 years in elected office, it becomes very clear that things like the old standard telephone, not so much. [Now], people are on cellphones and text messaging is huge, and the city doesn’t really have a presence there.
If elected, how would what you want to do be different from what council is already doing?
I would be looking to bring civility back to city hall, that’s the first thing. The second thing I would be looking to bring back, I guess I would call it a family-oriented style. Right now in Mission what we have is a group that went on a zero tax increase binge and in doing so they cut some essential services: public safety, road maintenance, all kinds of things that I believe made Mission a meaner, tougher place and a place that is not as family-friendly. And I believe that it’s the responsibility of a city council to make sure that to the best was possible they make decisions that make life better for families in the neighbourhood where they live today.
What we see with spending concentrated strictly in the downtown area in what they call a revitalization, many, many millions of dollars planned to be spent there, frankly every dollar that you spend of a project like that is a dollar that’s not in a neighborhood somewhere. And people don’t live downtown. Frankly the days of shopping downtown are almost gone. People don’t shop there now, they shop in big box supermarkets, shopping centres, you name it. The downtowns are more for, I guess I’ll call it destination shopping. There are some very nice stores in our downtown in Mission that people destination to, but if they don’t get parking near where they’re going they don’t go. I do not support spending multi-millions of dollars, in fact all of the capital money that we have in an attempt to revitalize downtown Mission is a gamble and I don’t like gambles with tax money — this is a pure gamble with no assurance of success and it’s probably about the sixth revitalization attempt, all have failed.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
One of the problems we have is homeless, addicted, mentally-ill people. I believe that the right approach is to first and foremost put the right kind of people on the street that basically learn who these people are as individuals: their history, where did they come from, what put them on the street, where’s their family. And when you have enough information on them as individuals you can start to look at what they need for help to get them back into a productive lifestyle. I know that’s worked in some communities — I know that things like street police, which we don’t have now, quickly get to know these people and they quickly build trust from those people and they [work], coupled with some of the social workers that we have. Mental health works are probably needed, I’m not afraid to be looking at that. And if we need to put some money into it, I’m not afraid to do that either.
But I think we have now a situation where some of the people running say that the homeless problem is not our responsibility, it’s the responsibility of the health authority and the government. But it’s our problem and it’s getting worse, and so I believe that we have to do something about it. You can’t talk about revitalizing downtown until you deal with that problem.
There’s a perception of danger particularly, a lot of women have that when you have scary-looking homeless people following you from the ATM for example, or in a shopping centre following you to your car. This is not what we need. We also have a huge influx of needles in our parks, in our playgrounds, one found at McDonald’s the other day. This is inexcusable. Fraser Health has introduced the needles to our community, and I believe the city council has a responsibility to its citizens to make sure that Fraser Health takes responsibility for those. It’s getting worse, astronomically worse, and we recently, the city council recently approved a mobile needle van, this is not what we need. There is no detox here now like [in] Surrey, Abbotsford. I think that when homeless people can’t get into detox because there’s a six-week waiting period, when they can’t get into treatment unless they’ve had detox, and when treatment is not paid for by Fraser Health in Mission, it’s just a revolving door. It’s goofy, it’s just a bad way to deal with this, but homeless people have no chance, so what we give them is needles. That’s it. This is a crime, it really is and I would like to do something about it.
What kind of communication will you try to have with the police department?
I believe that among the addicted, mentally-ill, homeless population there’s a couple of classes of people. There are those that are very vulnerable: they live in fear, they don’t trust really anybody, they are preyed upon by the predators. The predators wait for them on the social security payments, they’re waiting to take their money, they take anything that they can take from them and I think that the police and others can critically sort out who are the predators, [and] who are the vulnerable. And the vulnerable are the first ones we need to work on, and I think they’re the ones who probably would accept and want help before the predators. The predators I believe we need to have a little different method of dealing with. I thinkif they are unwilling to change, I could come with a fundamental belief that homelessness, addiction, and mental illness is not an excuse for improper behavior. There needs to be behaviours we accept, behaviours we don’t, and for those particularly [in] that predator group, if they want to continue with their following women or elderly people from ATMs we’ve got to deal with that harshly.
How will you manage the wishes of the province or private companies vs. the desires of the public?
That’s been forever a conundrum. There are groups that will oppose certain types of developments, groups that will be in favour of Genstar in Mission as a huge example. It’s an extremely large development company with a huge project in Mission, that has a group of people that are extremely opposed to it, another group of people extremely in favour of it, and you have to see balance to start with.
I guess you’d have to make a decision on whether or not you view development as progress. If you think development is progress, then you probably are going to be looking to support — you know, your question’s a difficult one because I’ve never had it asked like that before. There are projects that I think are very good projects that need to be supported, there are others that are not. I guess the council has to sort through and try to gauge what their constituency is interested in seeing. There’s always public hearings, but there’s also often City Halls get crammed with people who are opposed to things, and there’s a real danger with some councillors, particularly ones that don’t have a lot of experience, that begin to think because there is a very crowded council chamber with people very against something it must be a bad thing and they should oppose it. They lose sight of the fact that there are tens of thousands of people that are at home watching TV and playing with their kids and going to ball games and mowing their lawn and doing whatever they do who aren’t opposed. Usually on a lot of issues the opponents are the ones who are vocal, and the ones who are okay with it, they’re okay with it so they’re not going to show up at City Hall and carry a placard. And I think you have to, through experience try to figure out what the majority really do want.
Do you think that they are in favour by not speaking, or possibly indifferent because they don’t have the information?
I think experience lets you gauge to the best that you can without doing a lot of polling and all of this sort of thing. I think experience, because you’re in the community. The mayor needs to be in coffee shops and businesses, business offices trying to talk to the public to find out where they’re coming from and what can be done to enhance life in the community and you don’t find that out sitting in an office in City Hall. You could quickly, with experience, figure out where the public generally wants a particular development to go.
Also, public hearing in my view should be gauged on the quality of the arguments put forward, and not the quantity of the arguments. When you have 300 people coming with a form letter that was distributed to them versus 50 people who come with a very cogent argument that’s their own thoughts, I would tend to think that those people have thought it out quite well, I would probably tend to listen to them more.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say government … sometimes the government may try to do things that the city thinks are wrong, health cuts for example through your community. The mayor’s job is to galvanize the community in situations like that.
What would you change about the way the city currently uses its agricultural and urban spaces?
The biggest piece of agriculture in mission is tree-growing with a municipal-owned tree farm. That’s completely protected, it has the same kind of protections as the ALR, and it’s a model for British Columbia. When you say the urban lands, we’ve got official community plans that are pretty low-developed. Silverdale is going to house probably close to double the population of Mission over time, that’s where Genstar has its lands. We’re not going to see that for quite a few years to come but I think it needs to be protected, because that is going to be the future of Mission as far as development. A lot of people talk about densifying, let’s go up rather than out. I still believe there’s a place for families for families that want to have a yard. They want to have a house on a lot. They want a place for their kids to run around and play in their yard rather than on a small, concrete patch of the back of an apartment building, or a part down the street. A lot of parents don’t have time to take their kids [out] all the time, and frankly we’ve come to a place in this world where most parents would be afraid to let their kids go out by themselves to the park or wherever. Sad, but it’s the way it is. So I think that the public through official community plans, that’s where they help shape the future of what they want their community to look like.
Many people do not vote because they say they never see real positive change started at a local government level. How do you address that without resorting to unrealistic promises?
Well I wouldn’t say no positive change. I like to think that the three terms I served as mayor, the councils that I served with, there were very positive changes. We built a new mall, we built the West Coast Express, we built a new high school that has a 712 seat community theatre in it, we brought sewer into an area that was drowning in failing septic tanks, there’s a number of developments I guess I would say that were positive.
Mission has a problem with a leaking shopping dollar. Many dollars of our community’s available money goes to Abbotsford and other places for shopping, which means that to combat that, to keep that money in our community, we have to build the kinds of shopping opportunities that the public community wants. People make a lot of noise, I hear a lot of times people think Walmart is terrible, it comes to your community to kill everyone, but yet before Mission had a Walmart, if you went to the Walmart in Abbotsford you would see hundreds of Mission residents there. So I think they were voting with their wallets and their shopping dollars to say we really want Walmart. The opponents, many of whom are very small business owners like the downtown area, say Walmart would kill our businesses, but without Walmart people were leaving to seek the Walmart elsewhere. Those businesses obviously don’t have the goods that the people want at the prices they’re seeking and perhaps at the service levels they want, you know? They need to look inwardly, not outwardly. I think positive things can happen, I think when people want new recreational facilities, whether it be parks or trail systems, I think that should appeal particularly to younger people, city councils can bring that if they get the right kind of messaging from that constituency, so I think that it’s wrong to say they can’t affect change or they’re not interested in voting because they don’t see anything happening, a lot of things happen at the local level.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
