The next municipal election is a year away but a new group in the City of North Vancouver is already declaring their intentions for council.
The North Vancouver Citizen Action Association has formally registered as a society and is planning to run a full slate of candidates for mayor and council, who they hope will bring “balance” back to city council chambers.
“It’s a rough collection of people who have been watching city politics for some time and become somewhat disenamoured with the way things have progressed,” said John Jensen, NVCAA’s spokesman. “And we concluded the only way to really address it is to get together and act as a cohesive group to try to affect change.”
Former Coun. Guy Heywood was a catalyst for the group and started organizing living-room meetings over the summer. Membership is now in the dozens, Jensen said.
The group is still developing its platform and no candidates have been selected to run yet, but anyone wanting to apply must reject corporate, developer and union campaign donations.
“There is a perceived potential conflict of interest that doesn’t breed confidence amongst the electorate. If this type of issue is important at the federal level and now at the provincial level, we don’t see why it shouldn’t be important at the municipal level,” Jensen said.
The city should also renew its philosophy on density bonusing and infrastructure so the benefits from new development flow to existing residents, Jensen said, listing projects that have been completed in the last decade – the updated city hall, the city works yard and the Lonsdale Energy Corp.
“While the Harry Jerome Centre has been at death’s door for many years. The North Shore Neighbourhood House is in trouble and Silver Harbour has a seismically outdated building,” he said. “You serve the people who are living here now by ensuring we have a community that people in the future will want to live.”
Traffic is another major problem that NVCAA members hope to begin tackling in the next term, Jensen said. Traffic impact studies that come with new developments should be cumulative, not just focused on the number of additional vehicles on the road from one project or another in isolation, Jensen said.
Jensen said the city also needs to do more for transparency and open data, and to co-operate better with the District of North Vancouver and West Vancouver.
There will be no party whip, meaning any elected NVCAA member will be free to vote as they please.
Those who want to run under the NVCAA banner will have to wait until the spring or summer of 2018 before the party will start seriously considering who will be nominated for the ticket. For now, the group’s main objective is to improve the level of civic engagement in the community.
“We want to start getting people involved and then start identifying people who are calm and reasonable and not dogmatic or angry, to participate in civic politics,” he said. “This is really about improving the level of engagement and communication in the city,” he said.
The group can be found online at nvcaa.org.
Municipal elections will be held across B.C. on Oct. 20, 2018.
