While the election didn't go as I had hoped, I want to thank everyone who voted. Council exists to serve the will of the community, and the community has clearly said it wants change. I sincerely hope the new Council can make the changes the community elected them to make. It was an honour serving the community for the last four years.
Thanks,
Andrew
Squamish is a special place. The people of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw have known this since time immemorial. I am grateful for the opportunity to live within their traditional territory. Municipal elections are an opportunity for each of us to choose who we believe will make decisions in the best interest of the communities we live in and the communities we live with. Serving in local government means listening, staying informed, and making difficult decisions that affect people every day. To help make difficult decisions in the presence of conflicting perspectives, I strive to follow these three core principles:
open and humble community consultation
informed and respectful debate
timely and transparent decision-making
The Council directs many aspects of our community. It prioritizes resources (your property tax dollars) to keep Squamish an amazing place to live for all members of our community, both present and future. My guiding principles in Council decisions are:
fiscally and environmentally sustainable core infrastructure
fair and responsible development zoning
reasonable and reliable recreation amenities
“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” (Daniel Patrick Moynihan)
To share a common set of facts, we all need access to the data that builds them. To help provide access to that data, I built bcmunicipaldata.org, a website that lets anyone explore and compare property tax information for any municipality in BC from 2005 to 2026. I hope you enjoy visiting it as much as I enjoyed building it!
Council does a lot more than deliver on a short list of campaign promises, so rather than telling you what I "promise to deliver", I will share my views on some current issues. If you have an opinion on any of these issues, or if you would like me to include an issue that is important to you, please email me so that I can include it in my FAQ page.
Housing affordability is a complex issue. Part of the reason Squamish is such an expensive place to live is that Squamish is an amazing place to live. Another factor is that we are located in a river delta surrounded by mountains, which limits the land available for development. Any economics 101 book will tell you what happens when demand is high, and supply is limited.
What control does Council have on housing affordability? The most direct long-term control Council has over housing affordability is zoning. By allocating a mix of housing sizes and styles through zoning, Council can work to maintain a supply that keeps pace with demand. An important question in zoning is whether the increase should take the form of density or sprawl. Generally, I believe infill development (density) will lead to a more economically and environmentally sustainable community compared to greenfield development (sprawl).
Here are some books and reports that have influenced my perspective on our housing affordability challenges:
Many folks call Squamish home but don't have a house*. They're part of our community, our neighbourhoods, and our economy. They are us, not them. Some people don't live in a house because they can't afford one; others don't want to; and some are a mix of affordability and choice.
I believe in social support. Folks who can't fully participate in the market economy deserve help from those who can. For those experiencing a temporary struggle, help should get them through the difficult time and back to independence. For those experiencing a chronic struggle, help should keep a roof over their head with empathy and dignity. But this is a statement of ideals, not a plan to achieve them or a statement of what role I believe local government should play.
While social support is primarily a provincial responsibility, it can not happen without local support and federal infrastructure. The feds bear significant responsibility for the economic conditions leading to housing affordability. Housing affordability affects people's ability to remain housed. The province bears significant responsibility to support folks when they "fall through the cracks" of our economy. Local government advocates to, collaborates with, and manages the consequences of broad provincial and federal decisions. The Heart and Hearth program and the Government Rd Supportive Housing project are excellent examples of Squamish advocating to and collaborating with the province to help build a deeper social support system in Squamish.
Local government also bears significant responsibility for setting and enforcing community expectations. Community expectations are set both implicitly, in how we interact, and explicitly, in bylaws. Local government must both lead with empathic interaction and enforce bylaws, particularly when a bylaw violation infringes on a person's safety, perceived or real. The conversation around encampments is often framed as a dichotomy of support versus enforcement. This framing tends to embolden both sides to create straw-man arguments that speak past one another. I believe a better path forward is support with enforcement. As such, I support both the Heart and Hearth project and the proposed addition of two bylaw officers in our downtown.
Here are some books that have influenced my thinking on this:
* A "house" in my mind is a fixed building that is connected to water, sewer, and electricity.
There is no question in my mind that the Earth's climate is changing due to the carbon that humans are emitting into our atmosphere. As an individual citizen, I feel limited in what I can do to effect meaningful change without sacrificing what I consider a reasonable standard of living. As a Councillor, I feel limited in what I can do to effect meaningful change because many of the 'big' decisions are outside local government's jurisdiction. But those limitations do not change the importance of making changes or the value of those within our control.
Here is one small example of what I mean. When I'm working in town, I usually ride my bike. That is an individual choice I am fortunate to be able to make because I work in town (a couple of days per week), I can afford an e-bike (with fenders), and I am physically able to ride a bike (for now). Not everyone can or will make the same individual choice as I do - and that is good, because society would be pretty boring if we were all the same. One of Council's roles is to build a community that promotes individuals' ability to choose. If there are bike paths and streets that folks feel safe riding on, they are more likely to cycle to work, to school, or to the store. If folks can work in town, they are more likely to choose to ride. If public transit is more frequent, people are more likely to use it. And for each person who chooses to use a bike or a bus to get where they are going, there is less traffic in the way during the times I drive - either by choice or by necessity.
Transportation is just one example to highlight what I feel is within Council's control - build a community that provides the infrastructure for folks to make individual choices that meet their needs in a way that reflects their beliefs in the impacts of their choices on our climate.
Here are some of the books that have influenced my thinking on climate action:
How much does a bridge cost? For such a simple question, it's hard to answer accurately. But with hundreds of millions of dollars in capital projects in our master plans, this matters.
Predicting the cost and timeline of a capital project is difficult. When we complete our 10-year financial plans, we need to predict project costs several years in the future with only rough ideas about project parameters and what economic conditions might be when it starts. We start collecting development and amenity cost charges and project future taxation levels based on these predictions. So getting them right (or at least close) is important.
Project costing often starts with a draft of the initial designs, which you send to an engineer to count up how much concrete, how much steel, how much asphalt, and how many hours of people and equipment you'll need. You can then multiply these by the estimated costs of each item to get the total project cost estimate. A project manager can then plug it all into their favourite task-managing software and predict how long it will take. Add a 30% contingency and call it a plan. And yet, with all this planning, we (I don't mean just District of Squamish; I mean most people and organizations) end up predicting that a project will cost less and finish faster than it actually does.
You could simply say that you need to "hold someone accountable" for cost or time overruns, but what does that really mean? Firing someone won't deliver the project any faster, and fear is a notoriously poor motivator of great work. We need to think about the whole project life-cycle, from the initial objective to the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Start with your initial predictions. We know there will be unforeseen issues and that those issues will depend on the nature of the project. To help there, we can use something called "reference-class forecasting" - looking at what other projects have been completed and how much they ended up costing. The photo on the left is the $33M Hwy 7 Dewdney Bridge project near Mission. Collect as many of these examples as you can (the 'reference class') to see how much bridges typically cost. While this reference-class estimate should never replace a full design cost estimate, it is an important starting point that doesn't require paying for detailed drawings and costing. This reference-class forecast is not current practice for project costings submitted to Council. I believe it should be. Something that looks like a cost overrun could actually have been a prediction underrun.
As your projects get shovels in the ground, time matters. The longer the construction takes, the more opportunities there are for problems to pop up. Plan slowly (well, carefully), build quickly. Use modular design whenever possible. Unless required, avoid customization. Define clear decision pathways so you can respond quickly to changes. None of this is news to the District's professional staff, but as Council, we need to keep these things in mind as we guide projects from initial concept to final ribbon.
Here is the book that has most influenced my thinking on project planning:
"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream parking!"
Parking is one of those topics that tends to stir up strong emotions. In my view, the core challenge is that we have finite space and many potential uses for it. How people choose to allocate limited resources among alternative uses is the fundamental question of economics. To ensure sufficient parking is available, we need to think clearly about how local government regulations affect parking supply and demand. Let me use ice cream as an example.
People love ice cream, and they want more of it. They tell their local government to make sure they can get ice cream wherever they go. So the local government starts giving ice cream away on the street, for free. The people want even more ice cream. So the local government enacts a bylaw that all shops must supply ice cream to their customers. The shops are okay with that because they can cover the cost of the ice cream by raising the price of the things they sell. The people want even more ice cream. So the local government enacts a bylaw that all homes must come with ice cream. Home builders are okay with that because they can cover the cost of the ice cream by raising the home's price. The people want even more ice cream. Because ice cream is freely available on the streets, in the shops, and at everyone's home, it is unlikely that a business will invest in opening an ice cream shop for fear they cannot cover their costs. So the local government decides to build their own ice cream shop. The municipal ice cream shop cannot cover its costs through ice cream sales, so the shortfall is covered by property tax.
Now replace the word "ice cream" with "parking" and "ice cream shop" with "parking lot" in the paragraph above. Parking is a classic example of an economic shortage caused (in part) by parking minimums required in our zoning bylaws and free on-street parking policies. The cost of parking is distributed across our food prices, our home prices, and our property taxes. Whether we drive a car or not, we all pay for parking. If we want parking to be plentiful and available, we need to think clearly about how our regulations incentivize or disincentivize the supply of parking in our regulated free-market economy.
We have many examples of community assets whose cost is shared between property tax and the asset's users. The swimming pool, the ice rink, and our public transit system are all public assets funded by a mix of property tax and user fees. Like the ice rink, on-street parking is a community asset, and its cost should be shared between property tax and the people who use it.
Here are three parking reforms that Donald Shoup (economist and professor of urban planning at UCLA) describes in his book “The High Cost of Free Parking":
Charge the right prices for on-street parking. The right prices are the lowest prices that leave one or two open spaces on each block, so there are no parking shortages. Prices will balance supply and demand for on-street spaces.
Spend the parking revenue to improve public services on the metered streets. Let people see directly where their meter money goes; don't let it go to 'general revenue'.
Remove off-street parking requirements. Developers and businesses can then decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers.
Here are some of the books that have influenced my thinking on parking:
Here is an email I wrote to the VRS during the 2022 election campaign:
I believe that people should be able to choose to live in a non-fixed structure with dignity and that people who live in a community have a responsibility to contribute to the financial burden of maintaining the community (if they have the means to do so). Finding a solution for folks to live in non-fixed structures will be a benefit to both them and the community they live in.
I believe it is important to distinguish between those who choose to live in a non-fixed structure and those who are unable to support themselves in any structure because I believe there are a range of different responsibilities on our community to care for folks in need. For example, our community obligations to support organizations like Under One Roof are different from our obligations to support a facility for folks who choose to live in a van. Both of these cases are different from “visitors" who do not self-identify as members of the community.
I do not know the optimal solution; I would need to dig much further into the benefits and consequences of the different options. At first glance, I see a parallel between someone choosing to live on their boat in a marina and someone choosing to live in their van in a land-based marina. It seems to me that there needs to be something between a mobile home park and a campground.
After four years on Council, my core perspective hasn't changed much, and I still don't know the optimal solution. However, I have a clearer understanding of some of the challenges from the municipal perspective, including:
Priority. Finding a durable solution will take resources: both time and money. Many projects compete for District staff time and attention.
Residential Tenancy Laws. The District must not inadvertently become a residential landlord, so allowing people to reside on District property must be done carefully (if at all).
Equity. To my knowledge, no mechanism exists to charge property tax or utility fees to folks who choose to live in a vehicle with no fixed address. Living in a vehicle still imposes a burden on the utilities and municipal resources that should be shared by those choosing to live in a vehicle.
Here is a book recommended by a member of the VRS:
I am an instructor of Computing and Data Science at Capilano University, a husband, and a father of two boys. We found our way to Squamish in 2016 when I accepted the amazing opportunity to teach at Quest U. I have a PhD in physics from the University of Alberta and helped discover the Higgs Boson at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). My research and academic career have allowed us to live in several countries, including the United States, Switzerland, and South Africa. I hope to have the privilege of growing old (well, older), enjoying the people, trails, lakes, and mountains of Squamish. Squamish is an amazing place, and I would like to help continue making it even more amazing.
My campaign is completely self-funded. I am acting as my own financial agent. I have not, and will not, accept campaign donations. I will spend less than $500 on this campaign because I do not believe that money should buy your vote.
