Frankly Speaking

Tom Gill, who has been a member of Surrey council since 2005, is the Surrey First candidate for mayor in the October civic election. Surrey residents who pay even minimal attention to city politics must have been scratching their heads in recent weeks. One-term mayor Linda Hepner was retiring, but nobody was stepping up to the plate to take her place. This in the second-biggest city in B.C., where there are a host of serious issues facing the next council. It also occurred at a time when mayoral candidates in other cities, among them Vancouver and Delta, were coming out of the woodwork. There was a reason for the silence. No one was going to step up until the Surrey First slate, which has held every seat on council for the past seven years, said what it was going to do. The first hint came on Wednesday, when Surrey First Coun. Bruce Hayne announced he was leaving the slate. Clearly, some sort of backroom struggle had taken place, and he had lost out. Then on Friday, thre...

The City of Surrey has more clout than it realizes in the year leading up to the provincial election. Thus far, it has been reluctant to use it. Mayor Linda Hepner, somewhat belatedly, realized that there was a problem with school capital funding. She only seemed to realize the depth of the problem after the Surrey Board of Education voted on April 21 to ask the city to suspend development applications in three fast-growing areas. She offered the board some support, saying a month later that the city and school district had to come up with “their own plan.” Hepner said the city will no longer sit idly in the face of school construction delays, saying “The formula is broken. We’re going to develop (a formula) ourselves and present it to the minister.” Surprise, surprise. The province was receptive to the issue, and indeed almost fell over backwards to accommodate the school district. The BC Liberals won five of the eight Surrey seats in the 2013 election, and at least two of ...

A series of stories published in The Surrey-North Delta Leader on Friday, Feb. 26 (also available online at http://www.peacearchnews.com/news/370284771.html ) is called “No Fixed Address.” It sheds some welcome light on a challenge which Surrey and many other cities all across North America are struggling with. Most importantly, it features stories and photos of individuals who are or have been homeless. These allow readers to identify with and understand these individuals as people, who face very real challenges. The stories also point out that the road which leads to homelessness, and the road out of it, is complex and involves many very different factors. As is ever the case with human beings, each person’s story is unique. Each set of circumstances is unique. And solutions to this problem for each individual are also unique, which is one of the reasons the problem remains so intractable. Surrey’s response to homelessness has been somewhere in the middle of the pack, whe...

This week's column in the Peace Arch News and Surrey Leader Surrey’s latest Civic Treasures have all demonstrated a lengthy and passionate commitment to the community. Historian Roger Bose, reporter and musician Alex Browne and artists and mentors Cora and Don Li-Leger will be formally named 2015 Civic Treasures at the annual business and the arts reception on Oct. 6. This award is a significant one, as it is one of a small number of initiatives by the City of Surrey to recognize the importance of intangible but important aspects of city life. There is much more to Surrey than development, real estate, crime, roads and transportation. Bose is one of the many members of the pioneering Bose family who have played an important part in Surrey life for more than a century. He is a valuable source of historical knowledge in the city, regularly takes part in activities to promote Surrey’s rich history and is an instrumental research contributor to an upcoming book about t...