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CORNELIA NAYLOR\/FRESHET NEWS Burnaby Mayor elect Mike Hurley, surrounded by his family, addresses supporters on election night Saturday.<\/p>\nTheresa McManus, Local Journalism Initiative reporter<\/p>\n
New Westminster mayor-elect Daniel Fontaine is planning to shake things up at Metro Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Fontaine and Richmond mayoral candidate Kash Heed invited mayoral candidates in the region to sign their Metro Vancouver Accountability Charter, which they proposed using to guide reform of the regional planning authority. Heed was not elected, but three of the 12 mayoral candidates who signed the accountability challenge \u2014 Fontaine in New Westminster, Kirk LaPointe in West Vancouver and Chris Shields in White Rock \u2014 were elected in the Oct. 17 civic election.<\/p>\n
Fontaine said he\u2019s thrilled there will be two other people at the Metro Vancouver board who can second his motions. He said there will be a \u201cwholesale change\u201d because many of the mayors and councillors who had served on the board were not reelected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been saying this for three years: if you want new faces at the table, then you have to have new faces at the council. They sent new faces across the region,\u201d he told Freshet News. \u201cI think it would be smart of them politically, the people who are coming in, not to forget the fact they are there because, in part, the public wanted a fresh approach to Metro Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fontaine said he will bring forward a motion about the accountability charter.<\/p>\n
The document recommends:<\/p>\n
mayors only receive their municipal salary, with no additional stipends for regional board participation
\na full, independent review of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant project
\ngovernance changes, including the creation of a smaller, directly elected Mayors Council that would oversee Metro Vancouver, TransLink and E-Comm 911
\nthe establishment of an Auditor General for Local Government, with a mandate to oversee Metro Vancouver and its member municipalities
\na core services review of programs to identify cost savings and focus on essential priorities<\/p>\n
CORNELIA NAYLOR\/FRESHET NEWS Burnaby Mayor elect Mike Hurley, surrounded by his family, addresses supporters on election night Saturday.<\/p>\n
Some municipal politicians who had served on the Metro Vancouver board of directors were re-elected, including Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley, who has been the board chair.<\/p>\n
On election night, Freshet News asked Hurley if he was keeping an eye on other mayoral races in the region and what those results could mean for the regional district.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really don\u2019t think it means anything for Metro Vancouver. Metro Vancouver will stand on its own. It\u2019s a great organization that does important work,\u201d he said. \u201cI know there\u2019s a lot of rhetoric that\u2019s been talked out there, but at the end of the day, no municipality can be successful without Metro Vancouver being successful. So hopefully now that the election\u2019s over, we\u2019ll step back and say, \u2018OK, let\u2019s get this thing on the rails and make it work even better for residents.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u200b\u200bboard consists of 41 directors representing 21 municipalities, one electoral area and one treaty First Nation.\u00a0Along with Hurley, other municipal politicians who served on the board and were re-elected include mayor-elect Craig Hodge and Coun. Teri Towner (Coquitlam); Mayor Brad West (Port Coquitlam); and Mayor Jamie Ross (Belcarra).<\/p>\n
From the time he was elected a councillor in New Westminster in 2022, Fontaine has been highly critical of Metro Vancouver\u2019s governance model, payment to municipal politicians and cost overruns at the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant.<\/p>\n
Fontaine, who plans to serve as the City of New Westminster\u2019s representative to the board of directors, said he plans to be a \u201chuge champion\u201d for core services at Metro Vancouver. (In a previous interview with Freshet News, Fontaine said he doesn\u2019t support Metro Vancouver being involved in regional parks, housing or Invest Vancouver initiatives.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what they should expect is someone who values proper process, someone who values good governance, someone who values thorough debate, proper information being brought to the table \u2014 the good, the bad, the ugly, so that when we are making decisions we are doing on in an informed way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Remuneration to municipal politicians serving on Metro Vancouver board and committees has made news headlines in recent years. The accountability charter recommends mayors not receive additional remuneration for serving at Metro Vancouver; councillors would still be compensated for the extra work required.<\/p>\n
Fontaine said this would require an amendment to the remuneration bylaw, which will be among the first motions he introduces at Metro Vancouver.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt needs support of at least the majority of the directors there to eliminate that,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t get eliminated, we are going to have to move on to Plan B. Because I still want to sit at Metro Vancouver\u2019s table, but I don\u2019t want to accept the compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plan B will involve working with Metro Vancouver staff on finding a way that directors can opt out of accepting compensation if the board does not support amending the remuneration bylaw, Fontaine said.<\/p>\n
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LISA KING\/ FRESHET NEWS
Daniel Fontaine is greeted by supporters at the Inn at the Quay on Oct. 17 after winning the New Westminster mayoral race.<\/p>\n
With files by Cornelia Naylor\/Freshet News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Theresa McManus, Local Journalism Initiative reporter New Westminster mayor-elect Daniel Fontaine is planning to shake things up at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[129918,49,48,222947,45043,55],"class_list":["post-944035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-burnaby","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-new-westminster","tag-tri-cities","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}