District of North Vancouver Mayor Richard Walton has decided he won’t seek the chain of office for a fifth term this fall. With an official community plan in place, three town centres rising out of the ground and one more on the way, as well as more bus and SeaBus incoming, the district’s longest serving mayor has earned a break.
Like any mayor, he has been the lightning rod for community frustrations, whether he deserved them or not. People see towers rising from Lynn Creek, Lions Gate and Lynn Valley and put the blame on him and council for our rush-hour traffic woes. Walton has had the unenviable task of pointing out that our afternoon jams on the Cut are thanks to people commuting to the North Shore, not living here.
Walton’s been a voice of reason in an arena where voices of reason tend to be shouted down.
That OCP has largely shielded single-family neighbourhoods from change and concentrated almost all the district’s growth in walking distance to shopping services and transit. It’s sound urban planning but it is also leading to the displacement of many middle- and low-income renters.
On the TransLink mayors’ council, Walton moved mountains to move transit forward.
Intellectual yet pragmatic, he isn’t known for speechifying at the council table, and he runs meetings with a fair, even hand. His absence will be felt when a new mayor is sworn in this November.
We do however always welcome fresh perspectives and democratic renewal. There will be new hands steering the district’s ship come fall. It will just be hard to find any as steady as Walton’s.
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