FOR purely selfish reasons, I was a trifle disappointed when the curtain rose on the new District of North Vancouver council - exactly the same as the old council.
It's always fun to have new faces and new dynamics, particularly when trying to wring some drama out of a rezoning debate. But from a more objective perspective, it's actually impressive that district voters returned their entire council to office in the face of some very credible challengers. As well as a thumbs-up for council's general performance, the district results are really a vindication for the official community plan update process, this council's centerpiece achievement. Feathers may have been ruffled, voices occasionally raised, but exhaustive public consultation eventually produced a plan most residents were happy with. I really enjoyed Mayor Richard Walton's campaign slogan: "The OCP is my election platform." Apparently 81 per cent of district voters did as well.
Moving to 13th and Lonsdale, I'll confess I didn't expect Mayor Darrell Mussatto to rout the opposition as thoroughly as he did. Spreading the protest vote over three candidates helped, but even their combined total didn't come remotely close. It's been six years since he's had to compete and there have been some ugly debates since then. But ultimately his results speak for themselves.
They don't like the word "slate," but Team
NORTH SHORE NEWS 100-126 EAST 15th STREET NORTH VANCOUVER B.C. V7L 2P9 Mussatto did pretty well too, comfortably re-electing Craig Keating and installing Linda Buchanan in place of Mary Trentadue. Buchanan has weathered some bruising, school-closing years at the school district, and I don't think she'll need anyone to tell her how to vote. It will be interesting to see if she's as loyal a foot soldier for the mayor as Trentadue was.
But the real stories in the city, and in North Vancouver as a whole, are the victory of Don Bell and the defeat of Bob Fearnley. There's clearly no rust on Bell's political machine as he topped the polls in his city debut and garnered only about 1,100 fewer votes than Mussatto. I look forward to three years of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Bell is in an enviable position, inheriting Fearnley's deciding vote between Team Mussatto and the less cohesive bloc of Rod Clark, Pam Bookham and Guy Heywood. With the city's own OCP review ramping up, Bell couldn't have asked for a better opening.
But what happened to Fearnley? What brings a five-election, 15-year winning streak to an end?
Well, everyone's got a theory. Fearnley's is that his rivals succeeded in aggressively courting his traditional base, the Filipino and Persian communities in particular. There's nothing nefarious about this - that's how elections work. But Fearnley claims Mussatto promised both audiences the city would build them cultural centres, a claim Mussatto vehemently denies. I wasn't in the room myself, but I suspect it was one of those "I will work with you on this issue" lines. Smart politicians know the difference between support and commitment, and it's hard to believe a veteran like Mussatto would promise two new public buildings when the city already has its hands full with the Harry Jerome recreation centre.
Besides, a city voter could have voted for the entire Team Mussatto roster and still have space on their ballot for Fearnley, so I'm not sure this explanation stands up.
Fearnley also got caught on the wrong side of an ongoing spat between the city and some Lower Lonsdale residents. Some of the folks who live in buildings served by Lonsdale Energy Corporation feel the technically private but city-owned utility is gouging them on their heating bills. They retained energy consultant Kerry Morris - son of longtime city employee and later alderman Frank Morris - to lobby council candidates.
Whether or not these people are paying too much is hard to say. It's frustrating to admit that as a journalist, but neither they nor Lonsdale Energy Corporation can produce any data that compares an LEC-served apartment with a B.C. Hydro-served one. These studies do exist, but they were conducted by the strata councils affected and thus are not public documents. I can tell you that B.C. Housing got to choose whether to hook up one of their projects to LEC or install their own boiler. They went with LEC.
Morris' solution is to have LEC regulated by the B.C. Utilities Commission. This seems logical enough, seeing that LEC is a utility. In response to Morris' emails ahead of the election, almost all the council hopefuls either agreed with bringing in the BCUC or admitted they weren't really familiar with the issue.
District energy is one of Fearnley's areas of expertise. His response to Morris' questions was to point out that the reporting and accounting requirements of the BCUC would add substantial costs to LEC, costs that would be passed on to customers. City manager Ken Tollstam - also president of LEC - made the same point in a memo to the incumbent councillors, and said BCUC oversight would add at least $10,000 to each building's annual bill.
Transparency costs money, and while Fearnley was completely right to point this out, it certainly didn't win him any new friends in Lower Lonsdale. Two days before the election, a "don't vote for Fearnley, pass it on" email started making the rounds.
It's bad optics for any firm to be regulated by its owner, and elections are all about optics. Mussatto also opposes bringing in the BCUC, for the same reasons as Fearnley. Nevertheless, a majority of the new council is on the record backing the idea, with some caveats. Now they'll have to decide if this is a promise they're going to deliver on.
