Interviewed by Michael Scoular.
Since many students will be voting or taking an interest in municipal politics for the first time, what would you describe as the role of local politics? What can city councillors actually do?
I think the role that we play, from my perspective, is a filtering process. We’re elected as public servants and I take that very, very seriously. I was in public service as an educator for 33 years and now six years as a city councillor. Our job is to serve the public, not ourselves. So we need to filter between what staff is bringing forward in terms of their reports on issues that we have to deal with. We filter those based on what we know from our audience, the people that have elected us and then we try to make decisions that will guide the agenda in order to placate the needs and wants of those who have elected us. I think too though, it’s a difficult process because there’s a wider audience than just the people who have elected you. Not knowing everyone who elects you, you have a certain reputation, you have a certain set of characteristics and that’s why you’re elected or not.
Who do you view as your constituents?
Everyone. I have a doctorate in educational leadership and a master’s degree in the same field and I align myself with what is known in Stephen Covey language as principle-centred leadership. So I have my set of principles that I can tick off and simply say, “Okay, with this set of principles in this situation, what is the way to go?” The homeless issue is a stellar example of that, because you have a division. You have a bunch of people on one side, and a bunch of people on the other, and nobody’s really in the middle. So in order to cleave to principles, you have to shut up the noise. You have to really get in touch with your inner self, and for me it’s always about being honest, listening to all views.
If you’re honest and you care and you have some ability to impact what you view to be a negative situation, you have to, when it’s all said and done, cleave to those principles that allow you to make that decision, or some would say force you to make that decision. “To thine own self be true.”
This issue was very difficult for some, but when you go back to your principles, I think at the end of the day, I had peace and I’m also a Christian, I pray about things, and I definitely felt at peace with the decision that I made. As I look forward to what’s gonna come next, we’re going to be in a very good place in my opinion.
There’s also a philosophy that I find very helpful to me: “Is it a crisis, or an opportunity?” When you say this is an opportunity, you start looking for things, you’re at peace, and I think you’re energized to find a solution. This was an opportunity to take a whole community and say, “Okay, we have to do something that is good for the whole community. What are the opportunities here?” We can make sure we look after the homeless people because they’re a part of our community. There but for the grace of God go you and I, as my mother always told me. So we have to think in terms of what is good for the entire community, and I think that we’re on that road.
You said it’s an opportunity, but the significant — in the eyes of the public — opportunity with that housing project, did not get passed. Yet you said you feel that we’re in a good place. How?
In Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, habit number four is “Win-win, or no deal.” Now think about that. If I just want to win, and I don’t care about you or how you feel, what’s that going to do? It creates a divide, it creates a dislike, it creates animosity. With “win-win or no deal,” I’m trying to understand you, I’m trying to understand what you want. Then I’m going to put what I want on the table, and I want you to seek to understand that, which is habit number five: “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”
How will you receive the views of the entire population instead of just those most active around City Hall?
There are a myriad of things to look after, from infrastructure to budgeting to hiring and firing to vision, which to me is a huge thing. What is your vision of a future state; if you really want to be in Valhalla, what does it look like? Define it, give it characteristics, and where are we now? There are some things that inevitably, philosophically, we’ll talk about things around the council table, and then we’ll direct as a body, and that’s why we have nine, so we never a tie in the voting. We’ll direct staff, to go with their resources, and find out all about that issue, and come back to us with a presentation of how they seem to define the solution. So then you go through, again, how do I filter this through, knowing what the people that I know in the community want, and they’ve elected me to be their representative and I bring what I bring to the table, and what are my principles when I do this decision-making? And sometimes it’s against everybody else. And sometimes, more often, you’re in the majority.
There’s times where you’ll go out, and now we have the advantage of having social media — I’ll pose a question, like the YMCA, which was very interesting, with the polarization. I was in favour of the idea, but I wanted to know what everybody else felt who was following me. Because they’re basically the ones who elected me. And it was interesting. It was virtually 50/50. The ones that said “no” were inevitably male and in the business world. The “yes” ones were largely female and were in social services of some kind, if they were doing anything outside the home. So you have this polarization, and when you have a polarization, you got to go back to your principles, centredness again. And say, “okay, if we’re going to create a win-win out of this, what will deliver a win-win?”
Now that was far more difficult than the last one, because you had in the homeless, you have a Downtown Business Association (DBA), and I sat as the council representative ever since I started, so this is six years coming to a close on that committee. And those are people that are not necessarily great large corporations. Some of them have a small shop, living hand-to-mouth every day, but that’s their dedication to that business they love to do. Then there are others that will have a number of different buildings and so on and will lease those out, so their business is larger. But they had worked, historically, to create in the downtown a business development area. In the literature it’s C7 zoning. Nothing but business commerce was to be there. They felt extremely strongly about maintaining the agreement that they had.
Now, to someone like me — I’m not a businessman per se — but they told me that they had entered into a contract with the city, that this DBA was to be kept only for commercial purposes, so people would come into the old historic downtown which, back in the recession and even before was a pretty shoddy place. They put their heart and soul into it and that place is rising, it really truly is. So how then do you respect their request? They didn’t care if it was across the road! They didn’t care if it was two blocks down! They just didn’t want it in a DBA that they had fought hard for. So I respect that. And I say “Okay, if you’re not opposed to having it down here, it’s just those lots that are DBA, then I support it.” If you were going to say no, absolutely to anything that would have to do with the homeless, then I go back into my principle-centredness and say, “Okay, I can’t stand with you.”
So in that crucible of decision-making is a lot of emotion. You know, you can see how you’re holding a vote and you’re holding sway here. You have to be true to yourself, true to your principles, otherwise you won’t be able to live with yourself. And you won’t be able to fully, ultimately represent the people that sent you there because they’ll go, “What was that about? I didn’t know he was like that. Why did I vote for him?”
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
I’m here. And I have two stepsons, who are both recent graduates of UFV, and they’re involved in conversation with me on a regular basis because I like to hear what they have to say and how they can help me with social media.
How did what you were doing on city council change over the three years compared to what your initial goals were during the last campaign?
I came into this knowing nothing about city politics. Quite frankly, being disgusted by politics because of grandstanding, because of manipulation, because of etcetera. And political animals don’t have a very good reputation, and I’ve seen why. I’ve become wiser. I’m hopefully like a fine wine as I get older, getting wiser, and being able to do things that are constructive. That would be the summation of my journey: the acquisition of wisdom learned in the crucible. Nobody can know it until you’re in it. Things that look simple from the outside probably aren’t simple, most of the time.
Some people say “We want more information, we want more transparency.” Well, I always like transparency. If you don’t, there’s something wrong with you. But there’s legislation that is provincial that governs municipal activities, and you have to follow it to the letter. So every council day that we meet, the first meeting is always closed. And the legislation — there are about 12 things that you have to discuss in closed meetings. If it has to do with employees, their security, and so on. And when you leave that closed meeting, you leave the discussion behind. That was an interesting thing for me to be a part of for the first time. And I’m constantly learning on this journey. It never ceases to amaze me.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
I was in leadership enough to know that agendas are always changing. You can come in full of fire and vinegar and lose that on the roadside because of the way business is done. There’s a lot of things I would like to do — if I was thinking about personal legacies, I think we could do a lot better in terms of our internal transportation. What about trolleys? But the time isn’t now. The time now is to manage. The time now is to continue to build our revenues and make sure that we look after what we have and then as the economy starts to change, then we can start to look at those projects that we might want to get involved in.
I think you start to look at your physical resources like the river, like the mountain, like the university, like the airport, like the historic downtown. Sometimes envision the McCallum corridor and what’s happening with the U-District. This building here [indicating the Abbotsford Centre] is a jewel, you know it really is. It’s how you perceive it and what you can vision it to grow into. And there’ll be a lot of good information coming out in the next little while about that building. But then you’ve got the U-District, you’ve got the Gateway, you’ve got the MSA hospital lands now that are owned by Fraser Health and that’s all going to be redeveloped.
There’s just a myriad and a host of things that you have to not only manage, but lead while you manage. There are great difficulties in moving forward at certain times in history and largely at this point in time it’s because of financial considerations. There are far too many people who just can’t make ends meet anymore. We’re creating a lot of debt, personal and corporate. The city, I can tell you though, has been turned and is heading in the right direction, unequivocally, because of the work of the current mayor, who came in on that platform and fired the only guy that can be fired by the politicians and that’s the city manager. The city manager is the only one who can then turn around and fire anybody else. And this city manager and this mayor have turned the corner. It’s probably at least 18 years ago where there was a zero tax increase. You think about that. Pretty amazing. But that’s the kind of thing that has to happen for people to recover and for people to get employed.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
