We recently had the pleasure of sitting down to chat with West Vancouver’s Mayor to discuss everything from the status quo of the district, a glimpse into her career, and the role of the Persian community.
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I was born and raised in the lower mainland, am a mother of two grown daughters, a lawyer by profession and in politics for 15 years.
How did you get into politics, was there any inspiration?
I was on student council in high school, but I ended up gravitating to leadership roles in university, and then the chair of parent advisory at my daughters’ school. A former female mayor of West Vancouver, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, kept asking me to run for council, and she nudged me into politics.
Why West Vancouver?
West Van kind of chose me (laughs). I didn’t grow up here, but I’ve lived here now 30 years. My husband grew up here, I met him in law school and our first date was on the seawall here. I fell in love with him and West Van. We all have so much going for us here. It’s the best place in the world. Persian people love it here because it reminds them of Tehran, with the mountains and the ocean.
What is a typical day like for you?
The good thing about this job is that I don’t have ‘typical’ days, which suits my personality. I like change and I like thinking on my feet. A typical week means I start Monday with a council meeting, then in meetings all day including an evening meeting where we really move the business of the district forward. Tuesday afternoons I meet with the City Manager. My favourite part is meeting with residents, organizations, the Chamber of Commerce, and the middle of the week is meetings again. Thursdays, once per month, I chair the police board meetings. West Vancouver is really valued for its safety, and we love our police dept. Fridays I often have Metro meetings, now done by Zoom.
How do you see the Persian community?
Almost 10% of our population speaks Farsi. I know a couple words, merci in Farsi is like merci in French. I’ve been invited to meetings by the Persian Women’s Cultural Society and was just blown away by how smart, engaged, and organized these women were, how involved in civic politics. Since then, I have made an effort to understand the culture, the art, I attend celebrations and have a natural interest in the middle east. I do a lot of reading around that. Persian people bring so much, are very supportive of women in politics, and are very progressive. I can see a pride in their home country, and a real willingness to participate, get involved, volunteer, share their culture, their food, their hospitality. I have several close friends that are Persian.
How do you think the residents of West Vancouver can contribute to the city? Or even the immigrants?
My experience is that West Vancouver has one of the most engaged citizen groups of any community, when I talk to my colleagues across the region, they are really surprised at how many letters we receive, how many people come to council meetings, or watch us online. We have a very smart community, they chose to live here, they are educated, and have quite a bit of time to invest. We have over 25 committees here, we are always looking for diversity, because it represents the change that is happening in our community.
What changes or improvements have you made as Mayor of West Vancouver?
During this tenure I was able to participate in hiring a new City Manager, Robert Bartlett. I take that job seriously because whoever is your City Manager is also your Chief Administrative Officer, so they set the culture, tone, standards, and excellence of the organization. As mayor I am considered the CEO, my job is to set the vision, and then guide the implementation through council and my CAO. We also set the strategic plan, that is our roadmap, because if we have 7 people on council all going in different directions, chaos will happen, and we’ll never get anything done. We have just approved an update to our plan with about 6 major goals and 30 objectives.
Are there new strategic plans for 2022?
The challenges we face, and the needs of the community have not changed much in 3 years, but the most important element is tying that strategic plan to the budget. We have to allocate resources, we have a lot of hopes and dreams for this community, but we can’t afford them all. My personal priority is housing. We don’t have the right housing here and it is not affordable. We have 1700 empty houses that are sitting vacant because they are big and not inexpensive. What we need is more diversity of housing because we can’t attract young people to live here and enter our professional workforce, plus people are leaving because they want to downsize and have nowhere to go. It causes more traffic congestion because 75% of the people that work here, commute here, and they can’t afford to live here. It affects our businesses, we all know the staffing challenges that are faced by our restaurants, and all of those amenities we enjoy. I want to make people’s lives better, and I want to grow our community and thrive and be resilient.
The new bylaws, where you can’t construct monster houses anymore, what can you tell us about that?
We were building really large houses, which wouldn’t be a problem if people could afford them, or if we had lots of people living in them, but we have empty houses. What we really want wasn’t getting built. So, my motto in life is make it easy for people to do the right thing, so you often use the carrot and the stick. So, the carrot is if you want to do a coach house or secondary suite, we will give you more density, but if you want to just do a single-family house, brand new and starting at $5 million, we are going to reduce the allowable size of that. We haven’t really taken away the density we are just redistributing it.
Any final words?
I do want to thank you for this opportunity, and I love to connect with the community. I really believe that municipal government is where the action is happening, with the most impact and it’s not just about garbage, sewers and roads, it’s about building community and collaborating. The other levels of government are looking to us because we are boots on the ground, we know what our needs are. So, it’s an exciting place to be, and I have absolute belief that we can meet the community’s needs together. My job is just to listen, and then find that sweet spot, that compromise that everyone can agree to.