For Vancouver city manager, it comes down to community
Collaboration is key to solving municipal issues, Johnston says
When Sadhu Johnston moved to Cleveland in 1999, the self-described idealistic environmentally oriented liberal-arts-educated vegetarian and his wife Manda intended to change the city — and cultivate a backyard garden.
After the snow melted that first spring, they found the entire backyard was paved in thick concrete. So they rented a jackhammer and the couple — who are similarly slight in stature — got to work, to the bemusement of the steelworkers who lived next door.
“The neighbours were kind of watching us over the fence,” Johnston recalled on a sunny day on the lawn of Vancouver city hall, where he holds the top job as city manager. “We didn’t know them yet, but I had all these (pre-conceived notions) about who they were.”
The neighbourhood was a rough place — the kind of rough that led Johnston’s mom to take her jewelry off before coming to visit. The neighbours were self-appointed peacekeepers in the neighbourhood, claiming to own more guns than the police and have a faster response time, too.
“When they saw my wife on this jackhammer, it kind of pushed them over the edge,” Johnston said. The father and son came over and spent the next two days breaking concrete, arriving early and finishing late.
When the job was done, the pair wouldn’t accept payment, telling Johnston “that’s what neighbours do.” But they demanded answers. What they just couldn’t understand was why Johnston would destroy a perfectly poured backyard just like their own.
“It was totally foreign to them that we would be doing something like that. But it didn’t matter. They were willing to support that anyway,” Johnston said. “To me that symbolizes a lot of the potential that our cities have for us in terms of how we build community and support each other.”
Johnston arrived in Vancouver with his family seven years ago. His quest to bring an eco-industrial revolution to the economically depressed notch of rust belt that was Cleveland, and his later leadership of then-Chicago mayor Richard Daley’s green team, had caught the attention of Gregor Robertson, Vancouver’s environmentally minded mayor.
Johnston may have come to the city to be a greening influence, but in his post as city manager, which he took on full-time in March, he is now responsible for nearly every aspect of city business. His responsibility is to each councillor, to city staff, and to residents who look to him not only to keep the city running, but to improve it.
It is one of the most powerful positions in one of the largest cities in the country, and bearing that in mind, Johnston’s gentle demeanour can come as a surprise. When asked how his staff would describe him, Johnston said it depended on who was asked. Respectful, open, communicative, and collaborative, he hoped.
“I care about what I do,” he said. “I care about the people I work with. I’m not always going to be liked by everybody, I realize that. I do have to make hard decisions that people don’t always like, but I want to do it with respect.”
During council meetings, a bespectacled Johnston sits at a large desk behind a semicircle of councillors, often leaning in toward the action. He engages with members of each party, playfully so at times. In a recent sparring match in which one Vision Vancouver councillor asked a Non-Partisan Association counterpart if they did not trust staff members to do their job, Sadhu feigned a hurt look as if to say: “You don’t trust me?” At the start of another meeting, he placed his hand in turn on the backs of a pair of NPA councillors and asked how they were.
In part, it’s out of responsibility. “Working in council chambers, there are different political options. There’s power, but I work for all of them,” Johnston said. “They’re elected, they represent residents that have opinions, and so I really try to have a respectful relationship. … And I try to not fall into the fray of the politics.”
But it’s also that he’s a hugger, and one who takes time to connect with people. Being aware of others was a big part of his upbringing — an unconventional one, he offered readily.
Johnston’s father was from Toronto and his mother from South Africa. Both were followers of Indian spiritual teacher Osho. Johnston, now 41, was born in England but spent his first 11 years in spiri- tual communities in that country, India, Germany and the U.S. He spent most of his childhood with other kids and saw his parents infrequently. He was raised by a community.
That upbringing shaped how Johnston sees community in the urban landscape. It also influenced his approach to building policy and community support.
“What I try to do is to empower people rather than forcing them to do things they may not be comfortable with,” he said. “I don’t have the answers. I’ve been here seven years. Other people have been here for generations.”
Johnston spoke at length about the importance of gathering opinions from residents and taking them into account throughout the policy-making process. But don’t expect to see him get pushed around by those who decry a lack of consultation when they just don’t like the outcome of a decision.
“I came from a city, Chicago, where there wasn’t a lot of deep consultation. So I’ve been amazed at the depth, the breadth, the level of effort that the city puts into consultation here. I’ve just been really impressed with it, and then disappointed when people come (to hearings) and that’s one of their primary complaints,” he said.
He said he expects the city may “cause a lot of heartburn” as staff look for creative ways to help people in substandard and inadequate housing.
On challenges, Johnston said Vancouver’s lack of affordability is threatening the very fabric of the city. Actions taken — or not taken — at this point in time will be felt for decades to come, he said.
But he also sees opportunities — in transportation, relationshipbuilding with First Nations, and above all environmental transformation with the city’s goal to get 100 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.
“Listen to this, sitting here,” Johnston said, as cars and trucks zipped past along busy nearby Cambie Street. “It’s a constant part of our consciousness, the fossil fuels that are being burned in our city. … Imagine living in this city, sitting in this spot, without all that noise, where the primary noise you were hearing was not that leaf blower burning gas, but it was the birds in this tree above us, or the wind blowing in the trees. Imagine a city like that. It’s hard to imagine, but we’re doing it. We’re actually doing it.”