With about 140 days to go before the October municipal election, challengers are beginning to line up for a chance to unseat incumbent Mayor Lisa Helps.
At least three candidates — businessmen Gary Beyer and Sean Leitenberg and self-described former academic and child poverty activist Rob Duncan — have formally announced their intention to challenge Helps for the job.
“What I see out there is anger. I’ve lived in this town for 50 years and I’ve never seen people this angry,” said Beyer, co-owner of Tesseract 2.0 Computing. “I don’t know if you can attribute that to the way policy is, but I know you can attribute it to the way policy has been presented and how the information has gotten out or the lack of information has gotten out.”
Beyer cites fiscal mismanagement, housing affordability, and a one-size-fits-all approach to homelessness as some of the issues he would address.
He said more police “boots on the ground” are needed downtown.
“Foot patrols, bike patrols — a presence of the police resources we have, which are frankly, I won’t say are depleted, but our resources aren’t being allocated properly because we’re having our police trying to play social worker, which is provincial jurisdiction,” he said.
“We don’t need police to be social workers. We need police to be able to do their jobs.”
Leitenberg also cites housing affordability, fiscal responsibility, homelessness and mental health as major issues. The city has to do more to create affordable housing units rented at least 20 per cent below market value, he said.
“Some might say in Victoria that’s not even affordable, but that is the definition of what can be done and we’re not asking enough of the developers to produce that,” he said.
Leitenberg, a Victoria resident for 14 years, has spent the past five years running Canada’s Reno Rebate Inc., a company that helps people get HST new housing rebates. “We’re giving them the rights to build these condos and towers,” he said, “but at the same time not getting the benefits for the entire city.”
Duncan, who ran for mayor in 2014 as Changes the Clown, says on his website that the city is in the midst of a multi-faceted housing crisis and Victoria’s mayor and council have been sleeping on the job.
He suggests several approaches to raising money to address homelessness, including increasing the provincial foreign buyers tax, introducing an empty homes tax, and lobbying for a 10 per cent property transfer tax on homes that sell for more than $2 million.
Duncan also proposes policies to encourage creation of more rental units, including incentives for secondary suites and requiring replacement of any rental housing that is demolished. He supports supports a municipal living wage program, fare-free buses and designated bus lanes during rush hour and a moratorium on construction of separated bike lanes until usage increases.
The mayoral race will likely include more candidates; the citizens group NewCouncil.ca is still developing its slate, which is expected to include a mayoral candidate.
There’s no doubt Helps will run for a second term — she announced her intention to stand for re-election on Jan. 1.
