New mayors in North Vancouver look ahead to contrasting visions
Pro-development candidate wins in city, while district opts for slower growth
North Vancouver city and district both elected new mayors Saturday, but they have different visions about the pace of development on the expensive and congested North Shore.
Endorsed by outgoing City of North Vancouver mayor Darrell Mussatto, mayor-elect Linda Buchanan will continue to support the city’s rate of development, which has seen a major transformation of the waterfront and other areas into townhouses and condo towers.
She disagreed with the public perception and that of some of her competitors that growth was exploding across the three North Shore municipalities and is the cause of traffic congestion.
“We are actually one of the slowest-growing (municipalities) in the region,” she said. “So I think what that says to me when I hear those conversations, people who are telling us (development) is too fast, is we need to have a much greater conversation with the community and how we’re communicating with them and engaging them and really getting that information out.”
The new mayor of Buchanan’s much-larger neighbour, the District of North Vancouver, promised to slow the pace of development, though, to try to address the affordable housing crisis.
“We have to stop demolishing the affordable housing we already have in our community,” said mayor-elect Mike Little.
He cited a recent decision by the outgoing council to tear down 61 affordable rentals on Emery Place, so they could be replaced with a massive development with both owned and rental units that are expected to be more expensive.
Instead, the district needs to embrace the new purpose-built rental zoning that the provincial government has allowed.
“We need to be proactive about getting two to four projects a year going forward,” Little said.
Little congratulated Buchanan on her win Saturday night at his crowded victory party. But several of his supporters booed at the mention of her name.
To address the traffic congestion problem, North Shore leaders must do a better job of explaining to Metro Vancouver the extent of the major backups on the two bridges going into and out of the area, he said.
Other cities must agree to prioritize solutions for the North Shore, such as Vancouver and Burnaby, because “the backup is snaking through their communities and fouling up all of their streets.”
Little would also like to see major improvements to the B-Line bus service that is to be added to North Vancouver.
Little will be overseeing a slightly fractured council. He was aligned with six council candidates with three (Lisa Muri, Megan Curren and Betty Forbes) elected.
They will have to try to work with three other councillors with different alignments.
Little won a whopping 60 per cent of the vote, easily defeating his closest rival Ash Amlani. In the city, it was a closer race: Buchanan garnered 29.7 per cent of the votes, beating Guy Heywood (26.6 per cent) by 401 votes.
“There are definite challenges,” Buchanan said.
“Housing affordability, people are frustrated with the traffic congestion and we need to be able to resolve some of those issues.”
Four new councillors join the two (Don Bell and Holly Back) who ran for re-election.