2018 will bring change in South Fraser political scene

Delta Mayor Lois Jackson will be retiring from politics in 2018, after 46 years of involvement with Delta council. First elected as an alderman in 1972 (the first woman ever to hold that office in Delta), she has been mayor of Delta since 1999. In late 2017, she ushered Delta into a new era as it officially became a city.

The new year will bring a lot of changes to the South Fraser area of Surrey, Delta, White Rock and Langley.

Some of the biggest potential changes could be at the local council level. Voters will elect new councils on Oct. 20, 2018. The results of the 2014 election, the first in which councillors and mayors were elected to four-year terms, ended up mostly as expected. Many indications are that 2018 could be considerably different. Four-year terms did not bring out the best in some local politicians.

For sure, there will be at least two new mayors. Delta Mayor Lois Jackson is not seeking another term. She has been mayor since 1999. Her involvement with Delta council goes back to 1972, when she became the first woman ever elected to council, and she is a legendary figure in both Delta and Lower Mainland politics.

Mayor Ted Schaffer of Langley City will also be stepping aside. He announced in December that health issues have convinced him he should not run again.

Mayor Wayne Baldwin of White Rock is likely to face a competitive race. He has courted some controversy in White Rock, at least partially due to his style. As the former city administrator and a military veteran, he is not a natural politician.

There have been some significant issues too – notably the ongoing challenges with the city takeover of the water utility, and testy relations with both the Semiahmoo First Nation and the federal government. The fact that a predecessor of his as mayor, Gordon Hogg, is now the Liberal MP for the area may not make his job any easier.

Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner should have an easier time getting re-elected, and she might – but her first term as mayor has been far from a bed of roses. Her Surrey First slate won all nine seats on council in 2014, thanks to satisfaction with predecessor Dianne Watts and a very fat bankroll for its campaign, furnished largely by developers. However, that source of funds won’t be available in 2018, thanks to provincial legislative changes.

She has struggled with issues such as homelessness, secondary suites, crime, housing affordability, parkland preservation and rapid transit. Her single-minded focus on LRT has angered a significant number of Surrey residents, who prefer SkyTrain to an LRT system, and the fight over Hawthorne Park (which was 100 per cent due to the city’s intransigence and inability to listen) will most certainly be a 2018 election issue. The fact that a road through the park is related to LRT construction makes Hepner even more vulnerable.

However, it is a huge challenge to unseat a sitting mayor and councillors in a city the size of Surrey, where there are hundreds of thousands of voters and all members of council are elected at large, with no ward system. No challenger has surfaced and the fundraising required to mount a meaningful campaign will be a much bigger distraction from campaigning than in the past.

In Langley Township, two contenders have already announced they are running for mayor. Longtime councillor Kim Richter is challenging incumbent Jack Froese, who is running again.

Mayors are far and away the hardest-working members of their councils, and the demands on their time seem almost endless.

In the Lower Mainland, they have more duties than in other locales. Notably, most sit on the Metro Vancouver board, and all of them sit on the TransLink Mayors’ Council. They are expected to attend a lot of regional meetings, chair council meetings, take part in committees and be available for a host of local events from ribbon-cuttings to throwing out the first pitch at the beginning of the baseball season.

Mayors need to be willing to engage with the public, take phone calls in their offices and often at home, engage via social media, and be the best-known face of their particular municipality. They are also frequently approached by developers and others seeking to do business in their jurisdictions who wish to meet. Such meetings can take up plenty of time.

Many other changes are coming in 2018 to this area. Development and construction will continue at a rapid pace. High housing costs do not seem to have lessened demand, and much of that is driven by the good economic conditions being experienced in the Lower Mainland.

The end of tolls on the Port Mann Bridge in September changed traffic patterns in the area, mostly for the better, with both the Pattullo and Alex Fraser Bridges getting much-needed relief. In the fall of 2018, the Alex Fraser will be open to seven lanes of traffic due to a removable barrier that will significantly boost traffic capacity. This is very good news.

The Golden Ears Bridge between Langley and Maple Ridge also experienced much more traffic with the end of tolling, and that too has taken some pressure off other crossings.

Schools, which are badly needed in the fastest-growing areas of Surrey (and also the Willoughby area of Langley), should start to be built at a quicker pace if the promises of the new NDP government come to fruition. Education Minister Rob Fleming has promised that money will flow more quickly, and in fact one reason the NDP cabinet approved the Site C dam project was so it would have more money available to build new schools.

Salish Secondary in Clayton will open in 2018 and work is already underway on several other new schools. While the NDP government has focused on the needs in Surrey, it is important it pay attention to the needs in Willoughby as well, as many young families are moving there due to slightly more affordable housing costs.

New schools in Surrey and Langley can’t come soon enough.

More shelters for the growing number of homeless people congregating on 135A Street in Whalley are being built, and planning for a new hospital in Surrey is finally underway. The number of homeless s also increasing significantly in Langley, but thus far the only project underway is a five-bed youth shelter near the skateboard park on 203 Street.

An expansion of the Langley Memorial Hospital emergency department is planned, and it is long overdue. Langley Memorial Hospital Foundation is working hard to raise some funds from within the community to ensure the project goes ahead as soon as possible.

Change will be constant in 2018.