Striking contrasts
Dear editor: To vote in the election, I did some research on the two mayoralty candidates for the City of West Kelowna and found a striking contrast in the information publicly available.
Gord Milsom has a very strong website with several pages and a lot of professionally-written details. I quote his opening lines from it: “Gord’s hope for the future is a world where the following would be facts and not just dreams...”
(Thereafter follows a list of nine basic issues he wants to achieve.)
Gord Milsom does not outline on his website his involvement as:
· Past campaign manager for Mayor Doug Findlater;
· Together with the past council and mayor, one of the key activists and spokesman for the twice defeated $24 million 3P partnership for a new civic centre.
Is he a part of the establishment that created the present grandiose, expensive, construction and planning projects?
Mary Mandarino, on the other hand, has little public platform information other than news items setting out a very simple platform.
I contacted her office and asked for her complete platform and it was provided. It contained similar issues and failings of the present council as Milsom outlined and goes on to say: “...It is a big job building a city from scratch, so we need to be more sensible and less desirous...”
“...We need to focus on practical solution for the people ... We do not need pie-in-the-sky economic development with a new civic centre...”
“...There is of course more and I pledge to apply practical common sense to all of them...”
The two candidates (and some community groups) are saying the past councils did not get the key issues right.
Which mayoralty candidate is best suited to accomplish their lofty goals?
Will Milsom just continue to do the same old same old, or fight for a real “Well balanced change” (Milsom’s sign motto) to focus on needs? If old friends and political allies, Milsom and Findlater are both elected, will they vote as a block? If they vote as a block, it only takes one or two others to join the bloc to control council; is that a good thing?
Mandarino is a less-known commodity but promises simple, sensible, practical focus on needs, not special interests and egotistical edifices. Can she deliver on this? Is that the change West Kelowna needs to get spending and elaborate project costs controlled? Please think on these two opposing platform choices, and then, go out to vote! Doug Waines West Kelowna