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MUNICIPAL ELECTION
Day and Loo snatch vacant seats
Carol Day and Alexa Loo win council seats; Brodie romps mayor’s race; voter turnout leaps almost nine per cent; incumbents safe Graeme Wood
Staff Reporter gwood@richmond-news.com
Mayor Malcolm Brodie was elected for a sixth term as the head of Richmond City Council and he’ll be joined by two new councillors, after all six incumbents earned an additional four years at city hall. And while roughly seven out of 10 eligible voters still stayed home, voter turnout was up from 23.4 per cent in 2011 to 32.4 per cent on Saturday. All in all, 9,145 more ballots were cast this time around, even though there were 5,730 fewer eligible voters in the city (despite a population increase of about 8,000). The two new city councillors — small business owner Carol Day and former Olympic snowboarder and chartered accountant Alexa Loo — will soon replace outgoing, retiring councillors Linda Barnes and Evelina Halsey-Brandt, who had 33 years of combined experience on council. “I’m feeling really excited actually; thank you to all the people that voted for me and …the people that have been supporting me through this,” said Loo, who was joined by MLA Linda Reid and Barnes at her celebration party, moments after winning. Loo said one of her top priorities will be pushing for a competitive, 50-metre pool at the new Minoru recreation centre. “There are enough condo and highrise developments with pools; they can take care of the need for smaller pools,” said Loo. She also wants to focus on homelessness and mental health issues, adding, “to do that, we need really good community services and community programs to ensure people are
Carol Day, above left, received congratulations from fellow RITE candidate Michael Wolfe, after winning a seat on Richmond City Council at the third time of asking. Above right, Alexa Loo shared her victory at Legends Pub with long-serving councillor Harold Steves. This was former Olympic snowboarder Loo’s second shot at local politics. All incumbents kept their seats. Photos by Graeme Wood/ Richmond News taken care of,” said Loo. She said before the election that the city needs better engagement with businesses to solve the Chinese-only signs issue. Loo campaigned with fellow independent Dave Semple, the city’s former parks manager. She said she was surprised to garner more votes than Semple, who finished a disappointing fourteenth in the race. “Dave really knows how to make things work at city hall. You might have an idea, but Dave knows the pieces that need to be in place to make it happen,” she said, speculating that his health (recent back surgery) may have been a factor in his result. “Just like me last time, when I was eight months pregnant, people said, ‘I won’t vote for you this time; you don’t know how much work the baby will be, but I will next
time,’” said Loo, who also ran on a platform of improving traffic gridlock. During her campaign, she cited the No. 5 Road/Steveston Highway area as a priority (statistically, one of the city’s worst accident spots). Coincidently, that is also a priority for Day, a former school board trustee who got on council after failed attempts in 2005 and 2011. Day was elected from the RITE Richmond platform, placing sixth overall. She was narrowly defeated in the 2011 election and last ran for politics in the provincial election with the BC Conservative Party. Day said citizen engagement is her top priority. “People in Richmond wanted representation on city council. I’ve demonstrated over 20 years that’s what I am all about,” said Day. She said “building bridges and connections with other city councillors” is going to be her
OPEN Christmas Day
first call of duty within the next six months. “I probably need to build some friendships. Once I develop those relationships I’ll be able to be productive,” she said. Day is a staunch opponent of jet fuel on the Fraser River and made headlines over the past few years as part of the VAPOR group. Her platform is to build neighbourhood connections and transparency at city hall. “I’ll keep that going as a councillor. I suspect we’ll have a lot of coffee meetings with citizens,” said Day, who’s proposing to shake up zoning regulations to improve affordability in the city. Meanwhile, Brodie has served as Richmond’s mayor since being elected to that post in a 2001 by-election. He had previously served as a councillor from 1996 to 2001. see BRODIE› page 3
see HEADLINE › page 4 2014
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