City on the Verge

But is Victoria on the verge of a nervous breakdown or the potential for greatness?

Election week dawns and, for many who call Victoria home, the jury is still out on which way they’ll be voting for mayor. And despite 35 candidates vying for the eight council seats—including five incumbents—making choices for city council is a bit easier. Yet despite what initially held the promise of an exciting race—a three-term mayor stepping down during a time of much-needed change—the run, such as it has been, has been anything but thrilling. Regardless of how you feel about our eight mayoral candidates, there’s clearly been no Obamas stepping up to the civic plate.

Faced with a whopping slate of 43 candidates—and that’s not even including school board—we decided to focus our attention on the three arguable leaders for mayor, since many people either don’t know much about them or can’t seem to make up their minds. (With apologies to the other five mayoral candidates, some of whom have ideas well worth considering, Victoria probably isn’t quite ready for your distinctive approach to politics.) And even though we had trouble coming to any kind of internal consensus, here are Monday’s endorsements for mayor and city council . . . for whatever they’re worth, given our own dismal record when it comes to picking the winners (see page 13 for more on that). Oh, and dedicated Taflerians will want to read “The Point” on page eight for Sid’s own endorsements.

For council:

• Sonya Chandler: A progressive voice, we endorsed Chandler in 2005. She works with street youth, has a first-hand understanding of issues, understands working with coalitions, voted against the police budget request for 60 more officers and changed her vote to speak out against the Supreme Court bylaw appeal.

• Rose Henry: We endorsed Henry in 2002 and 2005 and, if homelessness really is the issue du jour, she brings the voice of street experience and could really shake things up. Plus, as an indigenous woman, could she be the combination of Obama and Hillary Clinton?

• Phillipe Lucas: We endorsed Lucas before, in both 2002 and 2005, and we’ll likely keep doing it until this smart, passionate, socially aware harm-reductionist and family man gets in.

• John Luton: A longtime advocate of a green city, Luton stands for sustainability, is opposed to P3s, believes in cost-effective and sustainable sewage treatment, and is committed to making the city more cycling friendly.

• Pam Madoff: Another double-endorsee, Madoff brings a wealth of experience to the table, which will be needed if there’s a new slate of council members. But the real question is, will she stay on council long enough to become the new Helen Hughes?

• Robert Randall: As well as being chair of the Downtown Resident’s Association and a familiar face at council meetings, Randall is a working artist and, as such, would be a much-needed strong voice for the arts on council.

• Charlayne Thornton-Joe: She has long been dedicated to finding solutions to thorny downtown issues and, as the co-chair of the Coalition to End Homelessness, will maintain continuity and bring a voice of experience—and the majority of current councillors consider her to be the hardest-working member. (Plus, she’s married to the nicest BC Transit driver in the fleet.)

• Pieta VanDyke: In addition to being keen to restore the needle exchange and have more integrated transportation systems, this former councillor (1987-90) also helped initiate the Vic West Skate Park . . . but 18 years was a long time ago.

And for mayor . . .

• Steve Filipovic: Under normal circumstances, Dean Fortin’s combination of experience and social awareness would get Monday’s vote, but due to his handling, as Acting Mayor, of the recent Supreme Court ruling against the city, we’ve got to go with Filipovic. (Sorry, Dean.) Why? Read on.

-John Threlfall

 

Looking to the Left
Is Dean Fortin the change-maker he believes himself to be?

Two-term Victoria city councillor Dean Fortin has all the trappings of a man working hard to become mayor of a provincial capital. He’s dressed for the part these days in a white collared shirt and suit jacket and talks excitedly about the latent potential of his city and his potential to lead that city to better days.

He’s also working hard to distance himself from the prevailing public perception that the present city council—Fortin included—has failed to deal effectively with the considerable challenges facing the municipality.

“Over the last few years we have been on the wrong side of the 6-3 votes so often,” Fortin says, pointing to lopsided outcomes that frequently found himself, Pam Madoff and Sonya Chandler on the losing end. “The progressives have been a minority on this council. We’ve been banging away saying we need to bring action, but now we are clearly at that point where we’re in an emergency situation when people who may not usually support progressives are saying, ‘Yes, we need to bring action and we’re prepared to support you.’ Frankly, I need that progressive majority on council so we can bring action on these issues. We’ve been dominated by the middle-right, by the business community representatives, and that’s why, if you want action on these issues, if you want action on affordable housing, if you want action on downtown safety and climate change, I’m your guy.”

Fortin is also trying to put more ground between himself and the view that he’s been part of a council known to study issues to death, while offering little in the way of concrete action.

“It’s been frustrating in the last three years,” says Fortin. “It’s felt like we’ve started many things but finished nothing. But now, it’s time to pick our priorities, take action, and I’m looking for that mandate if I get elected.”

“Action” has been a pillar of the Fortin campaign effort. The aspiring mayor used the word no less than 20 times during a wide-ranging interview with Monday. And action certainly seems to be the order of the day at Fortin campaign headquarters where, on a Friday afternoon visit, a dozen people were busy stuffing envelopes and working the telephones—including Victoria Hillside NDP MLA Rob Fleming and longtime Victoria Civic Electors organizer Patty Stockton. Fortin’s paid campaign manager and longtime friend Bruce Fogg estimated the Fortin team has about 150 volunteers working to get the Burnside Gorge Community Centre executive director into the city’s top job.

Fortin says that, if elected, his long-standing affiliation with the province’s current opposition party won’t hurt the city’s ability to wrest much-needed support from provincial coffers to build affordable housing and other goods.

“I am proud to carry the card of a party that puts people first,” says Fortin. “And I truly believe that we need to bring about a new relationship between this city and the province. Let me put it this way. At Burnside Gorge Community Centre I’ve been able to build this fantastic centre and I’ve been able to bring a lot of support from business people, from all levels of government, all parties in government, to build an amazing community centre that makes a difference in so many people’s lives. So instead of going to the province and saying ‘We’re needy, we’re needy, we’re needy,’ and having the province say, ‘I have many needy children called municipalities, I will do what I can,’ what we need to do is go to the provincial government and look for opportunities for partnership.”

Fortin, who helped govern Victoria during a period of unprecedented development in the downtown core, says the city failed to reap the potential benefits those projects offered.

“I believe we missed out completely on what’s called the development dividend,” says Fortin. “In light of all the building that we’ve had, what sort of amenities did we get for it? We didn’t. We lost out on significant contributions whether it be toward affordable housing, or whether it be toward other amenities.”

But now the building boom is over and we have to seize any opportunities that presents.

“What we need to ensure is that we’ve identified the priorities that the city wants to see—and by that I mean the residents—and move forward on those specific projects that we can attract government partnerships from, because in tough times, there are still priorities. I know the markets are melting down, but what that means is there’s built-up capacity out there, that there are a lot of construction companies and developers looking for opportunities and we should jump on some of the opportunities our province has set up for us.”

These are priorities Fortin says he has the experience to deliver, as evidenced by his participation in the CRD housing trust where he claims to have helped direct funding to more than 200 subsidized housing units.

“I have been slugging away for supportive housing, and we brought some on line, and we’ve got some more coming,” says Fortin. “We just opened up 45 supportive units, those are apartments with supportive services, in the last three weeks; we just approved another 44, and we’ve got another 45 that will be coming along in the next two or three months. It’s going to take political courage to make sure those come in and all neighbourhoods recognize that they have a role to play. Those supportive units are what end homelessness. That’s what we need.”

Fortin says the city’s neighbourhoods should be ready to roll up their sleeves and help in the housing crunch were he elected mayor.

“Every single community is going to play a role, and if every community recognizes that we’re in this together, and we can lead on this and look for it to be championed by Esquimalt and Saanich and Oak Bay, toward a regional response.”

City hall has been the focus of recent criticism for its lack of transparency on issues such as the removal of Ellice Park from the city’s parks inventory, and the more recent move to appeal the BC Supreme Court decision that called Victoria’s anti-camping bylaws unconstitutional.

Fortin says that among his priorities as mayor would be opening the closed world of city hall to citizens through initiatives like recording each councillor vote and posting those records on the city’s website, bringing what he refers to as “really boring TV” into people’s homes by posting webcasts of council meetings to the city’s website and by developing greater accountability for the city’s politicians.

“The mayor’s door will be open every day,” says Fortin. “Not just the last Friday of every month.”

While the financial-market meltdown currently grips developed economies and newspaper headlines, the issue of climate change seems to have fallen off the radar, but it is one about which Fortin claims to be acutely aware.

“I want to bring that commuter rail line in from Langford,” he says. “That initiative should take about 5,000 cars off the road and provide an affordable means of transportation and will keep our downtown as the preeminent location for play and for work.”

Fortin says that while his competitor Steve Filipovic may be a capital-G Green, Fortin is the one with a track record of good environmental works, citing his organizing initiatives to restore the health of Cecilia Creek and clean-ups of the Gorge waterway shoreline.

The aspiring mayor also claims to believe in the delivery of public utilities by public bodies and would resist pressure to privatize our near-inevitable foray into secondary sewage treatment.

“Ultimately, there are services that are far too important, that must remain in public hands, and I cannot and will not trade public interest for private profit. Sewer, water, these are important services.”

He rejects any notion that Rob Reid’s mayoralty would lead to the rapid results Victoria so desperately needs.

“We don’t have time, quite frankly, to go into another endless three years of consultation, of desperately searching for ‘creative solutions.’ We have solutions, we have a plan to achieve those solutions, we know what needs to be done. It’s time for action.”

Here Fortin returns once again to portraying himself as a change-maker.

“I’m looking forward to bringing that sense of urgency, I’m looking forward to bringing that sense of pride and completion, and I’m looking forward, with all due respect, to bringing that executive-director just-plain-stubborness, get-the-job-done type of mentality to the office.”

As the voice of experience in this mayoral race, it sounds like Victoria’s future under Fortin could be bright. But with two terms in office under his belt, it remains to be seen if Fortin is indeed the voice of change he believes himself to be.

-Jason Youman

 

Running for Change
Rob Reid hopes to be the new broom at City Hall

Rob Reid seems pretty relaxed for a guy running to govern a city in need of big fixes. But then, the ginger-haired entrepreneur and rookie politician doesn’t have to worry about keeping any political skeletons from falling out of his closet like main rival and two-term incumbent councillor Dean Fortin.

On the day Monday visits his Fort Street campaign office it’s just Reid, his paid campaign manager Louise Carlow and Reid’s 14-year-old son Keegan, tagging along on dad’s campaign for a school project. Asked what campaign secrets Keegan has learned so far watching his faher’s run at public office, he offers a typical teen response: “Nothing.”

Reid has built his absence of political history, and consequent disassociation from any political philosophy and ideology, into a primary plank of his campaign since making the surprise decision to run against Fortin in August. He’s also banking that his lack of experience with city hall will appeal to voters fed up with business as usual.

“I’m the community-spirited non-partisan candidate,” says Reid. “I don’t have that [political] experience and I’m not coming from a bureaucratic model. I’ve never been comfortable in that model. For me there has to be some practicality on moving forward and getting things done. Yes, we need studies, and yes, we need to make educated decisions, but I don’t think the experience or culture at city hall right now is helping our city, and that’s why I’m saying that a different approach to doing business at city hall might not be a bad idea at this time.”

What that “different approach” looks like apparently remains in its gestation period, as evidenced by Reid’s often meandering responses during an hour-long interview with Monday. His answers tend toward feel-good platitudes about bringing partners together and working to find “creative solutions.”

One thing Reid knows for sure is that after observing a handful of city council meetings, he sees the need for a new model.

“I think council needs to get out of the micro-managing of staff and let staff know what the game plan is and stick with it,” he says. “We have really amazing staff. I mean, we have a city manager that’s world-class in our city, and I think there’s a lot of untapped expertise there that we haven’t unleashed to do what she can do,” he says, speaking of Penny Ballantyne, who only recently returned from a six-month leave of absence. “That’s one key reason why I’m running, is to work with that city manager down there and see how we can streamline the process so that city hall works efficiently and we’re not spending taxpayers’ money while not taking care of the issues out on the street.”

While selling himself as the candidate of change, Reid is also trying to deflect charges that he is the “business candidate” of the 2008 race, sprung from the same mould as Alan Lowe and Bob Cross. In his work life, Reid owns two downtown specialty shoe stores, Frontrunners and the Government Street New Balance shop, and helped former employees launch two more in Nanaimo and Langford.

“I’m not running carrying the business flag, because that would be somewhat narrow-minded, and that’s not what I’m about,” he says. “It’s more for making a difference in the community, whether it’s helping out somebody living under a temporary shelter, attracting more tourists to our city, or encouraging more hi-tech head offices. I mean, we’ve got to look at the whole spectrum of things if we’re going to do a balanced job and look at our area as a region.”

Reid has, at the very least, informal support from movers and shakers in the downtown economy, as evidenced by a Reid campaign fund-raiser set this week at Mat McNeil’s Bard and Banker pub. McNeil’s establishment was the scene earlier this year of tête-à-têtes attended by members of the municipality’s downtown business elite to determine who they would want to see take the rudder in Victoria during what are sure to be choppy economic waters.

Reid has also made the top of the endorsement list of the South Island 2020 website, a civic issues forum administered by BC Liberal party strategist David Davies. Their endorsement of Reid’s mayoral candidacy puts him in the company of fiscal conservative Geoff Young, Victoria Harbour Ferries boss Barry “I want my city back” Hobbis and incumbent centrist Chris Coleman.

Reid denies a recent rumour that he’s a card-carrying member of Gordon Campbell’s provincial Liberals.

“I double-checked on that to make sure that wasn’t the case,” he told Monday. “I phoned the office and they told me I am not a current member.”

Reid insists that any backing he does draw from the business community hasn’t translated into a large campaign bank account from which to fund his campaign.

“I can’t say that we’ve brought in a lot of money, because we haven’t,” he admits. “And I can’t say that we aren’t in a deficit, because we are. I think all the candidates are in that situation.”

He does admit that if elected to office he will lobby the provincial government to restore the right of non-resident business owners to vote in municipal elections.

Reid acknowledges that the decision to run for mayor came in a series of fits and starts as he waffled between running for council and the top spot.

“Over the years I’ve always felt like I might want to step up and run for mayor, and I’ve had other mayors intimate that it could be a possibility that I’ve got the right stuff, so to speak,” says Reid. He declined to identify which mayors suggested he would be right for the job, saying, “I don’t want to put them on the spot.”

Reid’s decision was made for him when he saw the wide spread of candidates running for council, and what he perceived to be Fortin’s status quo approach to governing.

“To me it seemed we were at a tipping point in Victoria and it was time to maybe look at a different approach to how things get managed and dealt with and maybe get some new attitude and energy at city hall, and rejig the process and empower the staff to get on with some things.”

While he may not bring a history of governance to the job, he says he will bring the same energy he put in growing the Royal Victoria Marathon from a 1,000-participant race to an event that draws over 10,000 competitors.

“I’ll take passion for doing something over experience any time,” says Reid. “If I’m hiring a staff member and they don’t care about the job and don’t care about the customer, I don’t care what experience is on their resume. I think it comes down to getting somebody who can create great relationships, bring people together and wanting to move things forward for the right reasons.”

Reid believes that the first people to bring together are the politicians from the South Island’s fractious municipalities.

“We’re a region and we can’t just operate in our silos,” he says. “So whether we’re in Victoria downtown, or we’re a few kilometres away, I don’t think that should be a dividing issue.”

Following the field day Lower Mainland media recently had following the revelation that Vancouver mayoral contender Gregor Robertson had an outstanding $173 Translink fine, Monday wanted to know what dirt might be dug up on Reid’s history if he were elected mayor.

“I got a bylaw sign infraction once,” he says. “I had my sandwich board down on Government Street and got a $100 fine, but I paid that before filing my papers.” Other than that, he doesn’t smoke, doesn’t gamble and has a two-beer limit because “I’ve got this Irish background, you know?”

-Jason Youman

 

Street Smart
Steve Filipovic offers a real commonsense revolution

There may have been no greater gift to Steve Filipovic’s mayoral campaign than the city hall calendar that left Dean Fortin as acting mayor when Alan Lowe jetted off on a recent goodwill junket to Asia. Fortin was thrust into the spotlight as the voice of the city’s reactionary decision to appeal Madame Justice Carol Ross’ October ruling that declared Victoria’s anti-camping bylaw unconstitutional, prompting some prominent left-leaning community members who otherwise might have checked their ballots in Fortin’s favour to defect to the Filipovic camp.

Among those is Street Newz publisher Janine Bandcroft, who is urging her associates to vote for Filipovic, and Ben Isitt, who lost the 2005 mayoral race to Alan Lowe by a tight 1,400 votes, is disillusioned with the status quo options being put forward by Fortin and Rob Reid, and has requested a Filipovic sign for his lawn, a clear signal that Fortin lacks unanimous support from certain engaged citizens whose politics veer left of centre.

Those who stroll the city streets may have seen Filipovic’s manifesto, taped to the reverse side of Green Party campaign signs salvaged after the recent federal election and tacked garishly to hydro poles (probably in violation of city bylaws). They’re the only signs Monday has seen this election season that actually require passersby to stop and read, rather than relying on the subliminal name-recognition the other types of signs hope to achieve.

The self-employed contractor and construction worker, new father and chief organizer of the city’s annual Earth Walk, ran in the 2005 provincial election on the Green Party ticket, where he received 12 percent of the vote. While never holding public office, he has worked behind the scenes on Green Party campaigns at the municipal and federal levels.

Filipovic is not afraid to ruffle feathers with a worldview that demands change.

“I think that what’s happened is that ever since the 1970s the business community has really worked on controlling government and influencing government, and what we see now are governments that serve the business interest way above people and we really have to reverse that trend,” says Filipovic. “I think public education is key—knowledge is power. People aren’t stupid. They are busy, though, and when everyone is kept busy they become closed off from their world.”

In the wake of the B.C. Supreme Court’s urban-camping ruling, Filipovic, unlike Fortin and Reid, came out immediately in support of establishing a tent city for those homeless in Victoria who would choose to live in that arrangement. He has maintained that conviction throughout the race, citing the successes of tent cities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

“We know that the chamber of commerce and the city want to hire 60 more officers at a cost of $6 million annually, so that’s $6 million that could easily be put into housing and start to take people off the street,” says Filipovic. “The people who are on the street need supported housing, so a temporary fix could be a tent city, or a couple of them in different locations, to keep the scale down, but with proper supports—not just the minimum. The city is not doing anything when we should be allowing [the homeless] a place, supplying facilities for them—washroom, shower, facilities with hot and cold running water—to help them take care of themselves.”

Filipovic says that once one is in a semi-stable housing situation with a proper address, it becomes easier to build relationships with social-service providers.

The pressures on government to police the city out of it’s social problems factor regularly into Filipovic’s platform.

“We don’t have a problem with crime, we have a problem with poverty,” says Filipovic. “So more police can’t help that situation. We need to have housing solutions at a much greater level than are being supplied.”

Filipovic says that while his ideas may not curry much favour with some members of the business community, the ultimate outcome should be much to their liking.

“As a strong advocate for affordable housing, I’m really helping out business owners by bolstering their ability to have employees,” he says. “Because that makes it a lot easier to live in Victoria, to work in Victoria. If you’re saving for the future, you feel good. But if you’re paying way too much for rent, you’ll move somewhere else to look for options. There’s a lot of Help Wanted signs around Victoria and I think that’s a big issue for a lot of small-business owners, trying to fill those necessary slots. If you make Victoria more livable, I think that will happen.”

In conversation with Filipovic, it’s clear he has considered opportunities currently being overlooked by the city. It’s also clear that being in the building industry himself—albeit largely confined to fences and decks these days—he understands the particulars of property development.

“We can bolster the opportunities for people to form co-operatives, pooling their resources and then buying larger houses, and then dividing them up with support from the city with zoning and helping them with more flexible bylaws that allow them to create the living situations that they want,” he says. “We can also create rent-to-own buildings, because over 60 percent of people living in Victoria are renting, and because there are no vacancies, that forces the market prices up, so people are paying a lot more than they’re supposed to be for their accomodations—upwards of 40 percent and as high as 60 percent—and it’s ridiculous to hold our working class in that kind of trap. So, a rent-to-own opportunity would give them a market-priced rent, would give them equity in the building over time so they would have the same advantage as home owners, and that would help them save for their future.

As more units are created, Filipovic believes market pressure would be relieved and more reasonable rents would follow thereafter.

Filipovic also see a role for city staff in helping citizens understand what constitutes a reasonable price where building projects are concerned to keep stratospheric gouging at bay.

“I know extensively about housing, and I know we can build affordable housing in Victoria at a reasonable rate,” he says. “The pricing of contract work is very largely inflated. I was talking to someone down on Cook Street the other day and they said they had some work that needed to be done. and they got three prices on it: $17,000, $15,000 and $9,000. So obviously the people who are bidding really high are hoping that you don’t get a reasonable price in, and if you go with them, they’re making money hand over fist. And that’s really part of the contribution that has raised our property prices.”

Filipovic says he is not beholden to any particular constituency, other than those who recognize that compassion should be at the root of finding our way out of the city’s current troubles. As to why he would make a better mayor than Dean Fortin, Filipovic says, “I can offer someone who is going to stand up to the business agenda and make sure that affordable housing is done in Victoria. [Fortin] has had plenty of opportunities and has not proven his worth. He’s been there six years and it has been status quo during that time. They could have been putting money into homeless solutions, but they chose to buy more police.”

As to what Filipovic can bring that Rob Reid can’t: “Rob has been learning a lot, because I don’t think he really understood all the issues that Victoria was dealing with. I’m sure that he is being put forward by the business community and will serve them well, but we can’t afford to have another business-serving mayor. We need a people-serving mayor.”

Filipovic, flying his Green flag, says Victoria is kilometres behind Western Europe, and has even fallen behind many U.S. cities in reducing our municipal carbon footprint. In addition to bolstering bicycle infrastructure, he references a city in the U.S. that invested $600,000 to convert its street lights to LED and now saves $100,000 annually on electricity. “That’s a very short-term payback, and it’s these sorts of initiatives that we need to start implementing,” he argues.

Filipovic says he would also push to find funding to keep buses running later into the night, especially to the university, in the hope of alleviating some of the rowdy after-hours behaviour that has the current council contemplating shuttering downtown eateries at 1 a.m. He also contends that allowing bars to stay open past 2 a.m. so people can filter out at their own schedule might also go some distance to limiting the amount of obnoxious behaviour from certain patrons.

Filipovic will doubtlessly have a tough time emerging the victor on November 15 against two strong middle-of-the-road candidates, but the city would be all the richer with his genuinely rational and compassionate ideas mixed into the debate.

-Jason Youman

 

What Do We Know?
Considering Monday’s track record in elections past

Before you get all worked up and write that angry letter about Monday not endorsing your favourites of the 35 council and eight mayoral candidates, let’s take a look at the numbers from elections past. We decided to go back two elections and compare Monday’s endorsements to the number of people who actually snagged seats—and let’s just say our thumbs-up doesn’t seem to have too much impact on the results.

In 2005, Monday endorsed 13 people (for council: Pam Madoff, Dean Fortin, Marianne Alto, Philippe Lucas, Sonya Chandler, Sue Hendricks, Erik Kaye, Bryan Skinner, Wayne Hollohan, Wayne Poohachoff, Rose Henry and George Sirk; for mayor, Ben Isitt), of which only three (Chandler and incumbents Fortin and Madoff) landed seats. That’s a whopping 23-percent success rate.

We did a bit better in 2002, when we endorsed 10 people (Jacquie Ackerly, Rob Fleming, Dean Fortin, Rose Henry, Philippe Lucas, Pam Madoff, Denise Savoie, Bryan Skinner and Delton Woolcock for council and Isitt for mayor) and four of them (Fleming, Fortin, Madoff and Savoie) were elected, which gave us a 40-percent success rate. Who knows, maybe the Monday endorsement is the kiss of death—guess we’ll find out when the dust settles post-November 15.

-Amanda Farrell

 

Click and Vote
Inside victoriavotes.ca

This must surely be the first civic election where websites have played such an integral part in providing information about candidates. And victoriavotes.ca is one of the more popular local sites. “We average 60 new visits a day and they stick around reading,” says Nicole Chaland, BC-Yukon coordinator for the Canadian CED Network, who created the site. “328 pages are viewed a day and we see that increasing as we get closer to the election.”

Chaland sees the site as an added extra to traditional electioneering. “We need to see a new approach to civic engagement and an understanding that building relationships between community members is a responsibility of the neighbourhood associations and city hall,” she says. “Most of us should know—or at least know of—the candidates well before the election. The surveys and questionnaires tell us only how the candidate stands on an issue [but] unfortunately tell us very little about their skills.”

Chaland calls this “an exciting and important election” where there seems to be agreement between candidates on what needs to change: that Victoria should adopt a bylaw requiring a mandatory minimum percent of units in all new residential developments be set aside for affordable housing; that the city should adopt triple-bottom line criteria; and that the city needs to “do business” in a different way.

“With all this agreement and a bunch of people that really care about the city, it looks likely that we’ll get some traction on these key issues,” says Chaland, “if people vote.”

-John Threlfall