2026 Election: What are the Issues?
There are a range of important issues for the new Board to address. These will include the following:
Land Usage
A major aspect concerns the rental of space for trailers, small homes, and other shelters for people who otherwise have few permanent housing options. Not only do flexible land usage guidelines serve those in need, they also provide income for land owners who are struggling with higher taxes and an economy in recession.
Sewage
Although the status of the Cowichan Valley’s sewage and run off treatment facilities are not on most people's list of important issues, they soon will be. In brief, the system we have had in place for decades is old and not able to keep up with increasing population pressure. While the various municipalities in the valley are vaguely aware of the situation, none have a concrete plan to address the problem of aging infrastructure. Current upgrade proposals have seen costs skyrocket. In addition, there is still no buy in from other levels of government. The answer is not to simply increase property taxes on a population already taxed to the maximum.
Budgets
Inevitably, funding for new capital projects of any kind, perhaps especially an upgraded sewage treatment plan for the Cowichan River, will have to be addressed comprehensibly. Current CVRD Directors may claim that the solution lies in higher property tax rates, my suggestion is that current CVRD budgets need a thorough re-evaluation to trim nonessential items, at least until we are able to provide effective treatment options. To start, the new Directors will need to be able to examine all current budget items, including a critical re-evaluation of CVRD staff levels and costs.
Governance
The CVRD seems to have let basic democratic principles of governance fade away. Two clear issues stand out: First, the staff as a burgeoning bureaucracy, now appears to largely direct policy planning and implementation. The delegated authority given by voters to the Directors appears to have been replaced by staff guidance that the current Directors primarily rubber stamp. A new slate of Directors must take back effective control of decision making on behalf of the public. Part of the solution will be for Directors to engage more with residents of the Valley. One simple way to do so is to change the meeting times for Directors from morning to early evening. As it stands now, many residents who may want to view the Board at work to provide feedback, can’t do so because of their jobs. The inability for many members of the public to provide input to Directors must change.
Building Real Democracy
The last decades have shown that a top-down form of decision making has become the dominant political culture of the CVRD in which the staff make the recommendations, the Directors who do not always take their responsibilities seriously simply vote on staff proposals with little or no real input from the public. The same bureaucracy that drove policy changes is now able to enforce by law policy with intrusive “by law enforcement officers.”
My goal is to reverse this relationship such that power arises from below. It begins with ordinary people and moves upwards to the Directors who, in turn, direct staff to ensure that the public’s wishes are addressed.
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