Veteran city politicians, the first-time running wannabes, the one-term politicos who are hoping for a second term: they all pitch their personalities and platforms to voters at all-candidate meetings. Theresa McManus captures the action at one meeting hosted by the Queen's Park Residents Association on Sunday. For more election coverage and candidate profiles go to www.royalcityrecord.com
Transportation and taxes dominated discussion at an all-candidates meeting attended by more than 150 residents on Sunday.
All four of the mayoral candidates and 16 of 17 councillor candidates attended the meeting sponsored by the Queen's Park Residents' Association.
"We want to resolve the Pattullo Bridge," said Bob Osterman. "With your input and your help we can solve some of the traffic issues. Not all, but we can solve a large part of it."
Osterman said the city will undertake a transportation plan in 2012. He said people can't travel through the city during morning or afternoon commutes without encountering gridlock.
With TransLink set to make a decision about a new Pattullo Bridge, incumbent councillor Jaimie McEvoy believes the time is right to consider an alignment that may see the bridge routed to a new location, such as toward North Road.
"If we think we've got ratrunners coming through our neighbourhoods now, wait until its six lanes or eight lanes. I don't want to see that," he said. "I was proud to stand up for the community against TransLink when they were proposing their version of United Boulevard connector. I find myself wondering if we still need Pattullo Bridge routed through New Westminster."
Incumbent Bill Harper said the province and TransLink have agreed that the aging Pattullo Bridge needs to be replaced. He said he doesn't support tolls anywhere as they mean that rich people get to take their cars and poor people have to take transit.
"The whole issue of traffic in New Westminster is trying to manage it. I think that the position we have taken is to try and keep it out of our neighbourhoods, try to mitigate its impact on our residents here in the city but still allow it to go through," he said. "There are 450,000 cars a day that go through our city. Basically at this point there is nothing that we as individuals can do about it. We can work with the provincial government, we can work with TransLink to try and mitigate that as much as possible."
Harper said he wasn't in favour of the United Boulevard extension as it was proposed because it was going to dump way more traffic into the city and its neighbourhoods.
Vladimir Krasnogor said traffic is the number 1 challenge faced by residents. "If you don't do anything about traffic, we will have cars everywhere."
Chuck Puchmayr noted that incidents on the Port Mann and Pattullo bridges one day last week caused "absolute gridlock" in New Westminster. "We need to deal with the traffic in a very creative way so that we have goods movement and so that our citizens can get in and out of their neighbourhoods."
Gavin Palmer agreed that traffic is a big problem, but believes the bigger problem is that the City of New Westminster isn't working in cooperation with its neighbouring municipalities. John Ashdown believes the city needs a transportation bypass route around the city before the city sends too much time calming traffic.
Taxes and affordability also rank high among the top concerns of city council candidates.
"Recently I attended the mayor's budget focus group. The reason I bring that up is I am very concerned about how our taxes have kept going up year after year after year," said incumbent councillor Betty McIntosh. "This last year I did oppose the tax rate increase. That's the main thing I think most people are very concerned with what is happening to our tax rate."
Susan Wandell would like to see the city focus on economic development and to capitalize on the new development that's already come to New Westminster to keep costs down in the city.
"I would like things to be very fair. I believe in user fees, I believe in smart meters. I believe in having your electrical metered so you are paying what you use. As for the comment about the rich or the poor travelling over the bridge if they are tolled, I think that's an unfair comment to make when we have parking meters all over the city. I don't mind the parking
meters, I just wish they were more convenient," Wandell said. "I think the tolls will be necessary or we are going to have a heck of a lot of trouble in these two neighbourhoods with the Pattullo Bridge. I'd like things to be more fair for people. They can see what they're paying for when they have user fees."
Incumbent mayor Wayne Wright said New Westminster's property taxes are paying for amenities, social programs and services sought by residents.
"If you want taxes cut, we can do that. That is simple - it's the stroke of a pen. What you need to do is make sure we are spending your money, your taxes, for the things you want," he said. "The amenities, if you don't want the amenities, it's pretty simple."
Mayoral candidate James Crosty is concerned about the escalating costs and property taxes required to operate the city.
"The current administration is borrowing money for vanity projects in our city rather than fixing up these popular amenities," he said about Canada Games Pool. "We have borrowed $21 million in the last five years alone, and continue to incur debt at an unprecedented rate in our city. Today these pressures are happening with the backdrop of a national and global economic crisis. While I know it's not very glamorous to sit here and talk about fiscal management in the shadow of big, feel-good projects, I also know we need to keep a handle on how these visions are funded and what the cost will be to run them in the future. I believe the incumbent has lost touch with the residents in our community."
Mayoral candidate Vance McFadyen believes the financial stability of the city and of families living in the city a major concern.
"The financial stability of our city is of utmost importance over the next five years and beyond that," he said. "We are in a global situation. You're all aware of it. We have to be careful of what we do, how much we spend and where."
Council candidate James Bell said the city needs to keep taxes down, while maintaining things like Canada Games Pool.
Palmer said the city must keep taxes reasonable and be fiscally responsible, accountable and prudent when managing taxpayers' dollars.
"We have an explosion of six-figure incomes of people working in our city and it's growing exponentially. We cannot sustain that," he said. "We need to take those people and say to them, you need to produce, you need to be productive, you need to be efficient. We need to take and give each manager a budget and tell him he has to live within that budget and also cut that budget to show how good they are. If this city was run by private enterprise I don't think many of those people would still be here."
For more on the all-candidates meeting, visit Theresa McManus's blog under Blogs on The Record's website at www.royalcityrecord.com.
