Incumbent mayor Wayne Wright is known for attracting development to New Westminster, but the issue that is most personally meaningful to him is reducing homelessness in our city.

A constant source of frustration and conflict in New Westminster, traffic is one of the most heated issues in our city right now. This is the second in a series of posts highlighting responses from New Westminster Environmental Partners’ mayor and council candidates’ survey focusing on environmental issues.

New Westminster Environmental Partners, in partnership with Tenth to the Fraser, asked all the mayoral and council candidates about environmental issues. NWEP has each candidate’s complete answers on their website, and we will be publishing highlights from the responses over the next week or so. We will begin with the mayoral candidates’ takes on sustainability: how to define the term, local successes and missed opportunities.

It’s been with a keen interest from the perspectives of both a New West kid and that of a Realtor I’ve watched a positive renewal of many a New Westminster neighbourhood. Everyone operating within the city, visiting, or just driving through, has made note of much change. A while ago I had the opportunity to sit down with Mayor Wayne Wright and chat about this growth. Today I’ll share a few thoughts from my perspectives and conclusions from that meeting.
As a New West kid I grew to know downtown as …

At the first all-candidates meeting for the 2011 civic election in New Westminster, Bob Osterman took me to task for making fun of his ugly election signs.

New Westminster loves not only a parade, but events in general. Today’s ‘royal’ tea at Century House was no exception. The place was packed and the event sold out, with Mayor Wayne Wright and New West city councilors, MP Dawn Black, Poet Laureate Emeritus Edna Anderson, Salvation Army Captain Dave MacPherson, and Qayqayt First Nation Chief Rhonda Larabeeall in attendance. After being piped in, the pipers were paid and Master of Ceremonies Don Andrews introduced the mayor, who welcomed the crowd to the kickoff event for a year of celebration …

The Festival of Volunteers took place this past Saturday at Royal City Centre and the anachronistic thrills my co-author Briana referred to here did not disappoint. 
There is something about bagpipe music that just makes me smile -I have no idea what it is. So when I finished my shift at the booth I was volunteering for, it was perfect timing to grab a cup of chai from the Beverage Station in the centre court of the mall and grab a seat and listen to a procession being piped in by …

I have had the rare pleasure of having a local newspaper delivered to my door (seriously, our paperboy must be stockpiling them for a Piñata-making party), and after reading through the agenda in the two-page ad for the Festival of Volunteers, I see now that they’ve buried the lede.
My co-author Jen has already covered the altruistic reasons to head out to Royal City Centre this Saturday for the Festival of Volunteers. But even if you have zero interest in volunteering, it will be worth it to come out to see Mayor Wayne …

I am one of the many home owners in New Westminster with a rented suite. We have a sunny, clean one bedroom that is rented to a lovely tenant. When we purchased our home, the suite allowed us to buy a home that we could truly live in, and we did not have to move to Surrey. Try as we might South of the Fraser, we could not find a neighbourhood that we were willing to live in. I was elated to find this house, with all of its heritage …

Several weeks ago, I contacted both candidates for mayor: Wayne Wright (independent incumbent) and Blair Armitage (Voice New Westminster) and invited them to reply to an email interview to discuss various topics and give voters a view into what they were both like as people. I say I contacted them but really I contacted Wayne Wright and a few gatekeepers for Mr. Armitage. After striving twice and half-heatedly feigning interest for a third time, I gave up on the possibility that Mr. Armitage would lend his ‘voice’ to this …

Traffic congestion and public transit infrastructure are named among the top issues for most civic election candidates in New Westminster – and it seems we’re not alone. Greater Vancouver is experiencing major growing pains related to suburbun expansion. Cost of living has boosted growth in areas like Pitt Meadows, Coquitlam, Surrey and Abbotsford, but the majority of jobs are still located in Vancouver. The result is gridlock due to the funnel effect of so many people coming into the downtown area through a limited number of access points.

Unsurprisingly, those at …

When it comes to e-campaigning, many of our local candidates fall short.
A few – the Voice slate, Jonathan Cote, Matthew Laird – are doing a reasonable job of leveraging the web to communicate stance on the issues.
The others who have inadequate web presences or lacking any website at all are doing both their campaigns and New West citizens a disservice.
Mass media can only communicate so much about municipal politics, due to the constraints of the form. The web, on the other hand, has the potential to provide much more detailed …

As reviewed in a previous post, all 17 candidates for Mayor and Council were present at the Oct 21st All Candidates Meeting, hosted by the Queensborough Residents Association. We have heard from the Council hopefuls already. Here I review my impressions on the Mayoral candidates; Wayne Wright (incumbent) and Blair Armitage. Each man had an opening and closing statement and moderator Dean Wells had a number of questions reserved just for the Mayor’s race.
Blair Armitage looks the part. He is a squarely built, senatorial and businesslike and he began his …

The Queensborough Residents Association hosted what was for some, the opening salvo of the 208 Civic Election Season in New Westminster. With 25 days until voting day, this all candidates night at the Queensborough Community Center was the first of five similar nights where the 2 Mayoral Candidates and 15 prospective city councilors present their views to the public. The night was moderated by QRA President Dean Wells.The roughly 35 citizens who attended the ‘debate’ were treated to a list of questions, some pre-posted and some freshly minted by the …

In the last federal election, Canadian voter turnout hit a record low, with just shy of 60% of the population casting a ballot on October 14, 2008. Hearing that over one-third of us chose not to exercise the right to vote is depressing … until you hear that fewer than one-third of us bothered to vote at all in the last round of civic elections in British Columbia in 2005. With 26% voter turnout, New Westminster was only slightly below the B.C. average of 30%.

This is not something to …

It is a great time to start a blog about New Westminster. Not only have we just completed a federal election cycle (where two incumbent New Democrat MPs Peter Julian and Dawn Black were returned to Ottawa to represent their ridings) but a municipal election is at hand as well. Hope for a warm, dry day for Saturday November 14th 15th! That is our day to go to the polls. The City web-page has information here and you can find links to many of the candidates running for Mayor, …