GIBSONS MAYORAL AND TOWN COUNCILLOR CANDIDATES MEETING

DATE: TUESDAY NOVEMBER 12 TIME: 6:30 – 8:30 PM extended hours

PLACE: GIBSONS YACHT CLUB OPEN TO: Gibsons area businesses

FORMAT: Each candidate will have only 1.5 minutes to answer each of the first three questions and 2 minutes to talk about their personal vision. The bullets below the questions offer suggested inclusions to issues that some businesses have indicated are of interest. The evening will have a moderator. Some light refreshments will be available

1. How do you foresee working with the existing businesses to improve the economic stability and growth of local businesses?

- reduce the rate of business turnover

I am committed, win or lose, to becoming part of our local economic Development Group. We need a strategic development plan for Gibsons and we need it now. The reasons are simple. People need jobs and the town needs an expanded tax base. Federal and Provincial government downloading is going to whack all town of Gibsons taxpayers heavily in the next year or so. For example: If we are stuck paying 100% of Policing Costs as the Provincial Government is proposing, we will be adding 1.2 to 1.5 million dollars to the town budget in expenses we have to pay. This is roughly the same amount budgeted for All Capital Expenditures in the current fiscal year.

Win or Lose, I intend to lobby the province against the downloading of Police costs. I am not optimistic about success. Unless we significantly expand the town’s commercial tax basis, there are going to be significant tax increases this time next year!

2. What changes do you plan or advocate attracting and growing new businesses? What kind of pro-active steps will be taken for business recruiting?

- Types of businesses to be attracted

- How would you identify and fill gaps

- Removal of prohibitive DCC's (Development Cost Charges)

We need to do four things. First, as part of process of developing a strategic plan, we need to hire the services of an Experienced Economic Development Officer whose priority is Gibsons Interests. IF this means that we have to proceed with out the participation of the S.C.R.D. then I strongly believe we have to. Reality is we will be investing our town’s future. By wisely investing now we will be minimizing our tax liability on an individual or business basis down the road.

Secondly, we need to lobby the C.R.T.C., Telus and the Feds for a fiberoptic link to Horseshoe Bay. If we are to be truly part of the high tech revolution and prosper from its benefits we need this basic piece of infer structure. BC Tel and now Telus say this is coming –they don’t same when!

Thirdly we need to rewrite our bylaws to reflect the reality of life in Gibsons. For example our noise bylaw prohibits concerts in the park or any noise that last more then three minutes in a 15 minute period.

Fourth and finally we need revisit development cost charges and make Gibsons the affordable place to develop on the coast. We may lose some money upfront, but in the long run we will be ahead.

3. What guidelines or guiding principles will you suggest to ensure businesses are encouraged or regulated in the OCP (Official Community Plan)?

I believe that a well thought out economic strategy is of equal importance as an O.C.P. You really can’t have one without the other. We do not have the luxury of tax base built on high priced homes such as West Vancouver to be able to say to business go else where. We need business as part of our tax base. We need jobs that new businesses will create in Gibsons.

I agree with the Mayor that we need achieve independent. We could solve the ferry problems tomorrow if we could eliminate the need to shop and work in Vancouver. We have to create a retail climate in Gibsons such that the consumer wants to shop in Gibsons rather then have to. I am convinced that Gibson’s merchants can offer Vancouver Prices and selection and still be profitable.

In the planning committee over the last couple months there have been a number of large expensive homes looking for building permits and variances which is shows the town is growing but sobering when you think the 25% of the population on the sunshine coast lives below the poverty line. We need to develop economic and a community plans which reflect the spectrum rather then the portion.

4. What is your personal vision for Gibsons?

- restructuring the electoral boundaries

- Use of the harbour

- Transportation links between upper and lower Gibsons

- Tourism

- Town theme/character

- Infrastructure; health, environment, transportation, arts & culture, quality of life

My personal vision for Gibsons is simple: keep the good and change the rest. Gibsons has a wonderful lifestyle - need to retain and respect it. We need to retain its housing affordability yet bring down the cost of food and other essentials.

We need to expand our business tax base by developing more commercial business space and in the process earn much needed tax revenue.

We need to expand the town boundaries by putting Gibson’s best forward. We have water you can actually drink and a sewage system which after upgrades will be the envy of Vancouver.

We need a set of bylaws which reflect the way we actually live rather then some body’s utopian view of how we should live.

In short I want inject a shot of reality into our community, not to destroy Gibsons as we now know it, rather to preserve it for future generations.