Dear Editor:
To the new New Westminster city council:
Congratulations on having your whole slate take all positions in the New Westminster city council. It was quite an accomplishment to have such a clean sweep. You marshalled all your resources of vast campaign funding, phone banks, slate volunteers, partnerships and blanket advertising into quite a victory.
I worked on the campaign of independent Catherine Cartwright. This was a truly grassroots resident effort that consisted of around 12 local neighbours plus some helpful acquaintances in a few other sections of the city. These people came from the full political spectrum. We had no phone campaign (you're welcome residents), a limited door-to-door operation, a few hundred signs, and a very limited advertising budget. Most of our exposure came from our irrepressible candidate getting out to meet people where she could. At the end of the day, she came seventh and thus just missing one of the six councillor slots. A total difference of 352 votes kept Catherine from sitting on council (Catherine Cartwright's 5,165 votes vs. Mary Trentadue's 5,517 votes).
New council, I feel it is important to convey why we decided to try to join in the political fray. It started with the current council's treatment of our neighbourhood. They took a stand opposing the local residents who wanted to preserve the OCP designations for a property on Sherbrooke Street last year. (To get an idea of the scale of the OCP amendment opposition go to Google Streetview and see all opposition signs in front of most homes between Sherbrooke and Braid streets on Kelly,
Fader and Garrett streets.) This was only the beginning. We then started to scrutinize council decisions and it opened our eyes to financial questions (thanks to candidate Harm Woldring), transportation planning problems, the Hyack Festival debacle and other issues which made us think New Westminster might be ready to elect new blood to lead the city - or so we thought.
Now, with all the same players voted back in along with analogous new faces, there is no one left to provide a decent alternative voice.
New council - the ball is in your court. Are you going to support your residents' vision of what we want for our neighbourhoods or are you going to ignore us and make "other decisions"? Are you going to provide good, efficient government or are you going to continue to load us with an additional tax burden year after year? Are you going to stand up to city staff when their plans are so contrary to the wishes of our neighbourhoods or are you going to just blindly accept their recommendations.?
We hope this time you really work for the residents of this city. We will be watching the results and we are not going away.
As a last thought I wonder if the results would be very different if councillor candidates were restricted to spending limits - say $10,000 per candidate (still more that the cost of Catherine's campaign). I wonder ...
Gerald Sommers, Sapperton
