District of North Vancouver council veteran Roger Bassam is seeking the office of mayor in this October’s municipal election.
Bassam, who has served three terms on council since 2008, said he was inspired to seek the top job, in part, because of his dissatisfaction with the rollout of locking garbage bins. To him, it was emblematic of a council that had lost its focus on serving residents.
“I think it’s a pretty pivotal time in the district,” he said. “It was kind of step up or step away.”
On the future of the district, Bassam said he would stick to the still-in-implementation official community plan, which targets almost all future growth in four walkable town centres - Lynn Valley, Lions Gate, Lynn Creek and Maplewood.
“I think it’s critical to the long-term success for our community and I’m really concerned right now that there’s a group of people in this community who don’t support the plan and quite frankly want to shut everything down,” he said. “But change is actually required. A community is very much a living entity and like all living entities, we’re either growing or we’re dying. We’ve agreed some slow, careful growth that’s well planned is what we need to do.”
Transportation matters will also feature heavily in his campaign. The $200-million project to update the Highway 1 interchanges in Lower Lynn will still need the support of mayor and council to be completed, Bassam said. And the same goes for the implementation of the B-Line due to start running on the Marine Drive corridor in 2019.
On bike lanes, Bassam is all in favour so long as they’re not at the expense of existing traffic lanes.
But the district needs to be anticipating a future with less individual car ownership and more use of car sharing, on-demand services and autonomous vehicles, he said.
“That planning starts now,” he said.
When it comes to the provision of affordable rental housing, Bassam said it will be a huge cost for the district – upwards of $150 million in cash or foregone revenues. Rather than acquiring units through density bonusing, Bassam said he will seek a ballot question to get a mandate from district residents to create 1,000 units of affordable housing.
“My personal belief is the community is going to need significantly more than that,” he said. “I want a very clear mandate from the community and if they give me that mandate, I will do a great job of delivering those houses.”
Off council, Bassam works in the tech sector. The district is sorely in need of some updates, both in how it offers services to residents and in how staff do their jobs, he said.
The next mayor will also have to guide the district through the creation of its own organics composting facility, which Bassam said he supports. Currently food waste is trucked, at high cost, to Pemberton.
Underscoring any action he would take as mayor would be pushing the two North Vancouvers towards reunification.
“I truly believe getting the two North Vancouvers back together as one entity is going to be of tremendous value to us over the next 100 years. We need to be one community,” he said.
