Strong turnout for Colwood municipal All Candidates October 2

October 2, 2018 ~ COLWOOD.

by Mary P Brooke  :::

Almost 300 people came out to hear candidates for Colwood council make their pitch to the electorate. It was standing room only in the main hall at Church of the Advent this evening, October 2.

A mix-and-mingle ahead of formal speeches was an opportunity to chat and pick up campaign materials.

Hosted by the Bruce Simpson of the WestShore Chamber of Commerce, the question-and-answer portion of the evening went on for over two hours. And most people stayed for the whole thing.

Colwood is in transition from being a semi-rural suburban community to something more. What exactly is Colwood’s future is a partially painted canvas of a community that wants to grow but hasn’t put all the pieces together yet. That was clearly seen in one of the main questions about the new Official Community Plan (OCP), the ink of which is barely dry.

How the OCP shapes the community in the next few or several years is yet to be seen. Mayor Carol Hamilton (incumbent) stands by the OCP as a document that reflects an enormous amount of community input. Mayoral contender Rob Martin (a two-term councillor, and wrapping up two years as chair of the Greater Victoria Public Library board) feels strongly that the development community was not heard or appropriately responded to during the OCP development process.

An ineffective or difficult relationship with the west shore development community is obviously not a smooth way forward for the city that wants development for its obvious tax-revenue benefits to in turn provide more infrastructure and services to residents and community.

Some members of the west shore community as well as some Langford council incumbents and two new Langford council candidates were there for the evening discourse.

Due to the number of candidates, the civic discourse was conducted in two sessions. Mayoralty candidate Rob Martin shared the stage for the first session with council candidates Doug Kobayashi, Cynthia Day (incumbent), Eve Millington, Aaron Weisgerber, Jason Nault (incumbent), and Scott McDonald. Session two after a brief intermission presented mayoralty incumbent Carol Hamilton sharing the stage with Misty Olsen, Michael Baxter, Dean Jantzen, Gordie Logan (incumbent) and Stewart Parkinson.

[More on council candidate speeches coming in the October 5 print/PDF weekend digest of West Shore Voice News.]

Rob Martin said the biggest issue for Colwood for the next four years is employment and increasing the commercial tax base. If more people can work in Colwood there will be fewer people on the roads in commuter traffic, and it would mean more economic activity would be happening in the city where presently 93% of the tax base is from residential property taxes.

Carol Hamilton said the success of her seven years (two terms) as mayor has been her team leadership. She seeks another four years for the time to provide leadership for the implementation of what she has developed. If re-elected council could hit the ground running after October 20, she told the crowd.

In the audience for formal introductions were most of the Belmont Zone candidates for the SD62 school trustee election. At the beginning there were brief introductions for trustee candidates. Attending were Cendra Beaton, Russ Chipps, wendy Hobbs (incumbent), Ravi Parmar (incumbent), Dianna Seaton (incumbent), Trudy Spiller. Not present this evening from the SD62 slate: Bob Beckett, Blair Sloane.