Your most consequential local vote. Ever.
Under intense pressure to overbuild, your next Council will decide Port Moody's livability for decades to come. Speak up.
next term, 8 WAYS to protect port moody's future
1. Growth can be good, but stick to the Plan - Don't overbuild!
4. Build more affordable rentals, not just more over-priced condos
1. Growth can be good, but stick to the Plan - Don't overbuild!
Our Growth is On Track. Council has already ok'd enough pending redevelopment to grow our population from 35,000 to some 50,000 over the next two decades, in line with Port Moody's Official Community Plan (OCP).
Now, unless our next Council holds the line, PoMo is poised to vastly overshoot that growth target, which creates a serious risk
Our Growth is On Track. Council has already ok'd enough pending redevelopment to grow our population from 35,000 to some 50,000 over the next two decades, in line with Port Moody's Official Community Plan (OCP).
Now, unless our next Council holds the line, PoMo is poised to vastly overshoot that growth target, which creates a serious risk of overcrowding, strain on civic services, and more than $250 million in new civic expansion costs hitting our taxpayers.
I am committed to managing growth more closely.
Watch Out for Campaign Platitudes. In this election you will hear several pro-build candidates - including mayoral candidate Meghan Lahti - mimicking our call for "moderate growth" by saying they want moderation too. To test what they mean, you might inquire, first, whether they will commit to keeping population growth in line with the OCP's targets and, second, whether they truly recognize that such growth should proceed only in a prudent balance with the city's other crucial components: these include corresponding increases in jobs density, adequate park space, and manageable road congestion. If they have no intention of pulling back on population increases unless these other factors are in place, then the so-called "moderate growth" that these pro-build council members actually intend will prove excessive; their decisions will throw our city out of balance, endangering Port Moody's fundamental livability. Don't go there.
Moderate Growth = Developers Covering Growth's Civic Costs. Balanced growth will require that developers pay fully to cover the new civic costs that their additional residents trigger for the wider community. These include the building of a new library, an expanded recreation centre, a rebuilt Kyle Centre, more senior-oriented facilities, extra parkland downtown, and a big increase in manpower for police and fire&rescue (the City's most expensive line items).
Even excluding parkland acquisition, City staff estimate that the cost of growth will exceed $8 million per 1,000 additional residents.
So far, developers have been proposing to cover no more than about one quarter of all the civic capital costs they're triggering. Their intention is to shunt most of the capex burden to our existing taxpayers. That is unfair, and hardly anyone's notion of "moderate growth."
Next term I will keep pressing developers hard to pay their full share of growth costs and to respect our community's other needs. I will say no to piling on more density than little Port Moody can sensibly handle.
Renewing our Official Community Plan starts with respecting - not dissing - what residents tell us. Over the last couple years, the City has been gathering extensive input from Port Moody residents as to how we should update the city's OCP, which is our collective vision for Port Moody's future.
City Hall has conducted the largest-ever citywide surveys about issues related to density, growth, and the preferred built forms and economic focus for our downtown neighbourhoods.
The resident response coming back has been massive (e.g., the 2nd OCP survey generated some 1,800 responses). In terms of statistical reliability, we can be highly confident that what we're hearing back reflects the true preferences of our constituents as a whole. This is democratic input at its best.
Is Lahti Pulling a Trump? The next Council has a duty to listen carefully to and implement faithfully the public's vision. What the next Council and would-be Mayor should not be doing is rushing to shrug off and set aside what our residents say on grounds that the questions formulated by staff and consultants were slanted by design, so the public response to them is tainted and invalid.
Yet this is exactly what a mayoral candidate has been suggesting over recent months. Councillor Lahti is pulling a page from Donald Trump's pre-election playbook ("the coming election will be fraudulent and stolen, so Republicans should overturn the results") in her preemptive attempts to dismiss the upcoming findings of OCP Survey 3.
Lahti has taken to proclaiming falsely, over and over, that the survey's questions were formulated by, well, *me* and therefore how residents answer them should not be taken seriously.
For the record, all Survey 3 questions were designed by city staff and outside consultants, certainly not by me. Indeed, I had no access to provide input into how the survey questions were framed, other than during the few public sessions where all Councillors, including Lahti, had the same opportunity to comment, suggest improvements, and put our suggestions to Council majority vote. To suggest otherwise is conspiratorial baloney that seeks quite intentionally to undercut the integrity of the entire community input process. I suppose the Donald would be proud.
If this is how Councillor Lahti approaches listening to resident views about growth when those views are gathered and analyzed by outside consultants under highly rigorous survey conditions, then how can any of us trust the unbiased impartiality of Lahti's listening to residents in the role of mayor?
2. Revitalize our local economy
4. Build more affordable rentals, not just more over-priced condos
1. Growth can be good, but stick to the Plan - Don't overbuild!
Focus More on Bringing Jobs Density, not just People Density. As heavy industry has gradually exited Port Moody, we've seen our business tax base decline (which puts more pressure onto homeowner taxes). We have watched nine out of ten working residents forced to undertake long daily commutes to their jobs in other cities.
Today Port Mo
Focus More on Bringing Jobs Density, not just People Density. As heavy industry has gradually exited Port Moody, we've seen our business tax base decline (which puts more pressure onto homeowner taxes). We have watched nine out of ten working residents forced to undertake long daily commutes to their jobs in other cities.
Today Port Moody has one of the worst jobs-to-population ratios of any municipality in the lower mainland. If this situation continues, Port Moody is doomed to become just a bedroom community, which paints a bleak prospect for the city's economic future, municipal finances, and our reserves to upgrade amenities as our population grows.
A Vision for Turnaround. This past term I led the effort to start rebuilding Port Moody's sagging economy and tax base by attracting clean, sustainable industries to a re-energized downtown business district.
I initiated the City's first-ever Economic Development Master Plan, which sets strong job targets and ambitious new office and shopping space requirements for big downtown developments as our city grows. For every 100 new residents they house, developers should also be making room for at least 42 sustainable local jobs.
Also last term, Councillor Steve Milani, the Mayor, and I began a task force to work with landowners near Moody Centre Skytrain Station in designing the upcoming Moody Innovation Centre campus.
A New Business and Innovation District Downtown. Restarting our city's economy is ultimately essential to Port Moody's livability. Yet Council's long-time incumbents initially voted down my proposals for jobs recovery. Councillors Lahti and Dilworth ridiculed the need for economic turnaround as having been founded on "negativity and hyperbole."
With the pro-build councillors refusing to make the tough trade-offs between building more condo towers and creating a new jobs district downtown, our Council decisions have been making it that much harder for Port Moody to attain its vision as a city where residents can live, work, and play within a complete and economically healthy community. Lip service notwithstanding, true economic recovery for Port Moody will not be happening on their watch.
Linchpin to Our Future. Making room for more local jobs will give our city lighter rush-hour commutes, cleaner air, lower resident taxes, better amenities, and a healthier financial footing. Not achieving our jobs targets will produce exactly the opposite effects.
We need a refreshed Council that truly grasps what's at risk and takes a firm stand with developers in setting expectations for the construction of at least 2 million square feet of new jobs space downtown. The City's new economic Master Plan sets high goals, but its direction now is clear. Onward.
3. A more human-scaled skyline, not a wall of towers
4. Build more affordable rentals, not just more over-priced condos
4. Build more affordable rentals, not just more over-priced condos
Amazing Looks Different From What We're Getting. So far, redevelopment downtown has brought us mostly humdrum, cookie-cutter concrete towers you could find anywhere else. Next term, developers will be asking our Council to ok between 20 and 30 more of these boring boxes.
Aim Higher, Build Lower. While some additional towers will inevi
Amazing Looks Different From What We're Getting. So far, redevelopment downtown has brought us mostly humdrum, cookie-cutter concrete towers you could find anywhere else. Next term, developers will be asking our Council to ok between 20 and 30 more of these boring boxes.
Aim Higher, Build Lower. While some additional towers will inevitably make up part of Port Moody's skyline, if we are serious about becoming the region's exceptional City of the Arts, then this place should not end up looking like just another packed mini-Metrotown wannabe. Our downtown should look amazingly beautiful, it should be unusually eco-sensitive in how it functions, and it should be nature-oriented and innovative in its built forms.
Why Concrete Towers Suck. Our city doesn't need ultra-density at all costs. Erecting a thicket of drably conventional concrete-and-glass towers across Port Moody's compressed downtown zone is wrong for our community. Yet this is exactly what you'll see the next Council approve unless you change up its members to choose a mayor and majority demanding better.
Coquitlam-styled towers are not only boring to look at, they also tend to be:
1) Bad for the physical and mental health of their inhabitants, causing social isolation.
2) Worse for community life and social networks than other housing forms.
3) Poorly suited to families with kids who need outdoor space.
4) An excessive burden on nearby public parks and amenities, since dense tower complexes usually fall far short on shared green zones.
5) The very worst form of dense housing when it comes to combatting global climate change.
With a city rebuilt into concrete high-rises, we cannot achieve the tough GHG reduction targets adopted by City Hall in our formally declared Climate Emergency. What could possibly justify erecting dozens more of these ecological monstrosities in Port Moody, when we already know better than that?
Building concrete high-rises should now be the exception, not the rule, in Port Moody and around the world. Life on earth - specifically, your children's - is at stake here.
Make PoMo Massive. Our City of the Arts deserves better architecture, a mostly low-to-midrise skyline of more family-oriented built forms, and a strong preference for timber and mass-timber construction. I will keep pushing hard next term for Port Moody to get with the program. Self-styled climate-activist Lahti and her pro-build colleagues? Not so much.
4. Build more affordable rentals, not just more over-priced condos
4. Build more affordable rentals, not just more over-priced condos
4. Build more affordable rentals, not just more over-priced condos
See Past the Industry's Housing Myth. Pro-build candidates like to repeat the building industry's myth that housing prices are high because of a housing shortage: the price of new homes will come down, we're told, if only those NIMBY, combative local councils will get out of the way and let developers build yet more luxury condo units.
In reality, the latest Census showed that new home starts in B.C. have been keeping pace with growing demand; indeed, new units are being built faster here than anywhere else in North America. Yet, somehow, new housing prices keep climbing higher anyway.
Why? Because of wildly inflated land values and soaring construction costs, both of which, ironically enough, are driven up by the relentless pressure to build housing faster and faster.
This myth has worked nicely to the profit of developers and bankers, but it pushes the rest of us to the brink of a housing bubble crash, while accomplishing next to nothing to improve affordability.
Sorry, 94% Unaffordable Units is Not Ok. Over the last term, the major redevelopment proposals coming to our Council have offered, on average, no more than 6% affordable units in their mix, leaving 94% of new units unaffordable for lower-to-middle income residents, and especially for young families.
I am proud that last term's Council drew the line, setting new guidelines to require at least 15% affordable units in larger projects seeking big density. Councillor Lubik deserves special credit for taking the lead there.
Build What Our Community Actually Needs, or It's a No Go. A 15% floor is progress, but the City's Housing Action Plan has determined that, in reality, our community should be creating new housing options that include at least 30% affordable units for residents of ordinary income.
What's more, we need a much higher proportion of units well-suited to families (such as low-rise townhouses and multi-family that offer 3- and 4-bedrooms, with yard space for kids to play), as well as units optimized for senior residents (including assisted living), and for those with disability/accessibility needs.
Solution? Not Sure Yet, but Try Inclusionary Pre-Zoning for Affordability. Following the astute analysis of UBC economist Patrick Condon, we should be setting tougher affordability targets as an up-front precondition for projects seeking big density -- requiring, for example, that any big density increase must deliver a minimum of 30% affordable units. In this way, affordability gets baked into land prices and helps to hold down the runaway property speculation that is at the heart of the region's unaffordable housing crisis.
The pro-build members of Council have agreed that they'd like to address our community's growing un-affordability crisis, and yet so far they have resisted Condon's more rigorous inclusionary zoning approach.
Next term, let's replace lip service with a substantially greater share of affordable units, and less runaway land price inflation. I am ready to make the tough calls to enable this fundamental shift toward housing the more residents can afford.
5. Extend & protect PoMo's city parks
8. Get developer money out of PoMo politics
6. Keep growth in line with traffic limits
We Protected Bert Flinn! This past term, in addition to co-chairing the Parks & Recreation Commission, I led full protection for Bert Flinn Park, which was supported by the City's largest-ever community consultation for a single issue of this kind. Council members Milani, Lubik, and especially Mayor Vagramov - who co-authored the protec
We Protected Bert Flinn! This past term, in addition to co-chairing the Parks & Recreation Commission, I led full protection for Bert Flinn Park, which was supported by the City's largest-ever community consultation for a single issue of this kind. Council members Milani, Lubik, and especially Mayor Vagramov - who co-authored the protection motions - are the ones who future generations can thank for thinking ahead.
(Over a span of five years, attempting every kind of obstruction and delay while they professed loudly not to want a park road, pro-build councillors Lahti, Dilworth, and Royer voted repeatedly against protecting the integrity of Port Moody's largest nature park. Lahti insisted that a future council should retain the option of running a traffic corridor through the park's heart, to enable dense development and urban sprawl on the North Shore. No thanks.)
Next, let's save Rocky Point Park. If PoMo and Coquitlam will be adding 15-20,000 more residents within daily walking distance of our shoreline parks, then we will need to expand those parks, which will otherwise become badly over-run and worn out. Rocky Point is the central gem of Port Moody today, its single-most important amenity asset. The Park is plainly at risk.
Last term I initiated a staff review - still underway - to estimate just how much additional daily usage Rocky Pt Park can maximally handle before it becomes ruined. I believe we should limit nearby residential building that would overwhelm the Park's carrying capacity. At the same time, we must work to extend Rocky Point Park westward, as well as expand and enhance other parks in key growth areas.
One Park Idea to Dump. I am a big supporter for parkland acquisition downtown, yet not every new park idea makes a good fit to the community's needs. Candidates Lahti and Dilworth are proposing that we solve the city's parkland shortage by converting the old city dump -- which is located on Port Moody's far southwest border and is largely composed of sinking hillsides of potentially toxic garbage making them unfit for growing food or other uses - into a new public park where families and their kids can roll out their picnic blankets and run around barefoot.
This strikes me as a dubious idea in a poor location -- it's a campaign-ready pseudo-solution to the city's parkland expansion.
What our community truly needs is a major community investment in expanded walk-in park and recreational space downtown, near the city's central densification zones.
The old dump site might make excellent sense as a profitable brown-field site for certain kinds of safe new industries. The City has been looking into possible partners there, which I support.
6. Keep growth in line with traffic limits
8. Get developer money out of PoMo politics
6. Keep growth in line with traffic limits
Our Residents' #1 Daily Headache. People who live here consistently rank Port Moody's worsening commuter traffic congestion as the #1 livability problem of our city.
The Census tells us that employment commutes in and out of Port Moody are already averaging 40-60 minutes each way. That's a lot of time stuck in the car for the majority
Our Residents' #1 Daily Headache. People who live here consistently rank Port Moody's worsening commuter traffic congestion as the #1 livability problem of our city.
The Census tells us that employment commutes in and out of Port Moody are already averaging 40-60 minutes each way. That's a lot of time stuck in the car for the majority of residents who cannot make taking public transit feasible.
Excessive commutes cut into family time, increase serious accidents, and diminish daily quality of life.
That's Just the Way It Is?
Over the last decade, Port Moody's pro-build councillors have responded to our roadway congestion mainly by throwing up their hands and hoping for the best. Pointing to the City's visionary Master Transportation Plan (which is based more upon hopeful intentions than upon rigorous traffic modeling), these councillors have continued to pretend that simply concentrating dense development around the city's two Skytrain stops will succeed by magic in maintaining roadway congestion at current (already awful) levels as Port Moody adds thousands more residents over the next two decades.
At the same time, our pro-build councillors tend to suggest the problem is out of our control, blaming the crunch on thru-commuters heading to other cities (who make up half of today's rush hour traffic, but whose share will decline as our hordes increase).
The Limits of Public Transit. Skytrain helps, but it is no traffic panacea. Judging from best-case adoption rates in other highly-urbanized cities, even with TOD (transit-oriented development) zones, our public transit will probably prove unable to absorb more than 50% of all the new commuter trips generated by downtown densification. All the rest gets added to our current commuter snarls, converting downtown densification directly into road gridlock across Port Moody's inherently constrained and minimal road grid.
Get Moving on This. Commuter conditions are already bad and getting worse. So, what to do?
First, measure the problem so that we can stop talking in generalities and start setting capacity limits. Determine how bad things will get if we keep saying Yes to big downtown developments. At my recommendation, staff is now tasked with modelling the expected cumulative drive-time impacts of the many projects going up across our downtown.
Second, I know the suggestion will chill the hearts of developers, but we really must start saying No to new density that would seriously worsen the average drive-times of locals, or cause rush-hour back-ups at critical city commuter crossroads. In my view, the imperative of having a city whose infrastructure functions properly must outweigh densification goals whenever the two conflict and that conflict cannot otherwise be reconciled.
Last term, I voted against Wesgroup's grossly excessive Coronation Park proposal and other hyper-dense downtown ventures bound to bring our rush hours to a standstill.
Pro-build advocates may wring their hands and agree that traffic is a problem, but at this point, such gestures of concern won't cut it. Our city leaders must let traffic realities constrain how much more densification our city can handle.
Elect a refreshed Council that stops ignoring this crucial livability problem.
7. Smarter urban planning starts now
8. Get developer money out of PoMo politics
8. Get developer money out of PoMo politics
"Plans are nothing, but planning is everything." So thought General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II. He had a point: if we're not in active planning mode to anticipate and manage change before it arrives, odds are we've already lost.
Twice the Challenge, Half the Planning. We are looking at an
"Plans are nothing, but planning is everything." So thought General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II. He had a point: if we're not in active planning mode to anticipate and manage change before it arrives, odds are we've already lost.
Twice the Challenge, Half the Planning. We are looking at an enormous potential increase in local density - PoMo's population could easily be doubling over the next 30 years, to exceed 70,000. This would make Port Moody more tightly packed than today's Burnaby(!).
Even at Port Moody's current population of 35,000, our library, our rec centers, our essential services such as police and fire, and many of our key amenities are already hitting their capacity limits. So imagine a decade out, when many thousands of additional residents are jostling for the same gym space and library books.
What exactly are the City's plans, at this point, to engineer and fund expanded civic capacities so that all is ready when the next wave of residents arrive? I'm sorry to report that, from what I have observed, actual planning for this explosive growth has been in short supply at City Hall.
Among other concerns, there are signs that Port Moody has not been negotiating as effectively as other places to ensure that developers pay the costs of growth, which means that our municipal coffers are now emptier than they should or could be. So we're not starting with much buffer to jumpstart our civic service expansion. Indeed, very little expansion of any kind is in active planning, let alone underway.
Let's Track Growth Better. My goal has been to move our Council and staff into more proactive planning mode. In 2018, I drafted the City's first standing process to regularly review upcoming developments in the pipeline, and to conduct proper planning so that city services and amenities keep up with growth, lest our quality of life deteriorate.
Let's Set Smarter Growth Guidelines. in 2021 Council adopted my framework of 7 practical development guidelines:
- Grow in line with the OCP targets.
- Prioritize rebuilding PoMo's economy.
- An innovative cityscape, not just towers.
- Grant no extra density without extra community value.
- Local livability comes first.
- No ruining Rocky Point Park.
- Don't buy into long-term city problems for short-term gains.
(Click on link below for full report.)
In sum, last term we succeeded in developing better planning tools and more prudent principles to guide our growth decisions. The question now is...
Will the Next Council Get Moving on Planning Port Moody's Future? Will these disciplines guide sensible growth next term, or will they simply be ignored and shrugged off, as the pro-build half of this term's Council has, in effect, chosen to do?
The answer will depend upon whether or not this election puts a refreshed and fully independent Council in place to apply them. See point 8, next up.
8. Get developer money out of PoMo politics
8. Get developer money out of PoMo politics
8. Get developer money out of PoMo politics
At its root, the conflict on our Council has been about development.
Time and again over the last four years, a difficult split emerged between the long-time incumbent Council members -- who had funded their 2018 re-election campaigns primarily from donors linked to local land-development interests --versus newer members who came into off
At its root, the conflict on our Council has been about development.
Time and again over the last four years, a difficult split emerged between the long-time incumbent Council members -- who had funded their 2018 re-election campaigns primarily from donors linked to local land-development interests --versus newer members who came into office with few donor attachments to special interests.
A Tale of Two Councils. Donations linked to land-development interests made up, on average, an estimated 6% of the 2018 campaign financing for Steve Milani, Hunter Madsen, Amy Lubik, and Rob Vagramov.
In contrast, development-linked donations made up, on average, 65% of the campaign war chests of the longstanding incumbents, which ranged from 55% (as reported) by Diana Dilworth, to 60% for Barbara Junker, 61% for Meghan Lahti, 70% for Zoe Royer, and almost 75% for then-Mayor Michael Clay.
(And these high percentages actually understate these incumbents' campaign reliance on industry funds: the figures would have gone even higher, had our calculus opted to exclude each candidates' own campaign contributions from the numbers.)
Mind you, all of these donations are perfectly lawful to give and receive under today's election rules, which should, I believe, be tightened.
Perhaps not surprisingly, most of these donors were linked to developers pursuing projects likely to be coming sooner or later to our Council for approvals.
(Find the full detail on development-linked donations to respective Council members in my report at...
DEVELOPERMONEY.CA.)
Bankrolling one's political career in this way may, technically speaking, be lawful under current election laws. But as the Vancouver Sun paraphrased the ultimate question, is it really "ethical and prudent for elected officials to be financing their campaigns in a way that leads to divided loyalties"?
And sharply divided is, indeed, how our Council debates unfolded over the last four long, bitter years. Councillors Lahti, Dilworth, and Royer came out staunchly in favour of almost every building proposal. (We don't know for certain how Junker would have voted on growth issues last term, of course, since voters rejected her re-election bid, but her track record leaves ample reason to expect that, if she's elected to the coming term, she'll resume voting in line with her pro-build colleagues.)
In some instances, it seems, councillors may have even abruptly walked out of council sessions to pull quorum and shut public proceedings down when they thought the vote that evening might not go the way the developer wanted. Good governance? You decide.
Are We Too Tough on Developers? The long-time incumbents have also taken to dismissing pushback against developer proposals as senseless, anti-growth "obstructionism." They complain that skeptical, uncooperative members who push for project improvements and better community benefits are just being unreasonable. We've been knocked for being too hard on the poor, put-upon developer, for "moving the goalposts" through rounds of back-and-forth negotiation, and so on.
When Council members deadlock this way around big growth issues, conflict sharpens, meetings fray, and some get personal or try making it all about gender.
3 Steps to Get Developer Money Out of the Picture. How to fix this mess on Council?
First, our community should elect a fully independent Council whose members have not become tied to special interests.
I will not be accepting any election campaign donations from persons linked to development. I would suggest that you consider voting only for those few candidates who have taken a similar pledge of complete independence from the industry, and skip the rest.
(Note: when you head to the ballot box, you are NOT called upon to check off 7 council choices; in fact, you create the greatest odds of getting your few preferred candidates into office by voting only for those few, and no secondary filler choices.)
Second, increase public transparency regarding donor attachments. Council recently passed my recommendation to amend our body's code of conduct, which hereafter will call upon Council members to disclose any donor attachments prior to deliberating on related development projects, and which encourages those with donor entanglements to recuse themselves from Council decisions.
Third, change the campaign funding model. The province of B.C. should consider reforming the campaign finance laws to further restrict corporate donation practices, while increasing public funding of municipal election campaigns, such that candidates are less dependent on attracting donations from vested business interests. Port Moody will be formally recommending these measures at next year's conference of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities.
Sure, money often does increase influence in municipal politics, and it regularly fosters differing viewpoints on city councils throughout the democratic world. But an entrenched orientation should never be allowed to fuel Council acrimony and division to the levels we've observed in recent years. Enough.
Lahti the Uniter? So, last term's sharp conflict was mainly about development in Port Moody, and Councillor Lahti was a principal contributor to those tensions. Watching our collective Zoom screens across countless sessions, I observed Lahti manifesting disrespect for others -- including both females and males, but particularly toward male members -- at more meetings than not.
Cue Meghan's endless eye-rolling during the comments of other Council members, her caught-on-tape outbursts of cursing and vulgarity, her aggressive interruptions and chronic abuse of the point-of-order rule to interject comments.
And that was just the Meghan Way during formal council sessions. Outside of meetings, members became all too familiar with Lahti's copious online scoldings, her snide put-downs, her frequent sexist generalizations about "the men on council," and so much more. The public has never known the half of it; the complete picture has been disheartening.
Yet now mayoral candidate Lahti is assuring voters that, if elected, somehow she'll be bringing sweet harmony and mutual respect back to City Hall. She can achieve this, I suppose, so long as respect is just a one-way street that's moving in her direction.
Even assuming that candidate Lahti is sincere in wanting to reform her excesses and assume the mantle of Council peacemaker now, and even believing that, personally speaking, I can usually work amicably with Meghan, nonetheless I very much doubt she's the right leader to be bringing our Council together again.
For one thing, she's plainly a partisan of one side in the community's ongoing disagreement over the proper pace of local development, and her political ambitions are being underwritten through campaign funds from developers. Unless Meghan is supposing that residents will simply start piping down and going along with whatever developers want during her reign - think Clay Years 2.0 - I'm afraid that a Lahti mayorship will be part of the problem, not the solution, to our community's impasse.
(And unfortunately, then too, Lahti's girls-versus-boys mentality and her relentless gender-baiting wouldn't heal any bonds, either.)
No, my sense is that Steven Milani as mayor will provide the moderate, even-keeled, highly civil linchpin that can unify our next council and help to heal our community as a whole. Milani has earned my vote.
By working together with genuine respect, civility, good humour, and a sense of fair play -- and by no longer allowing outside interests and social media bullies to divide us -- I feel confident that Port Moody's civic life can become reasoned, civil, gentle, and even joyful once again. I'm fully on board for that brighter, more collaborative future.