Colleen Hardwick, who resigned from the NPA to sit as an independent in April, announced Wednesday that she has joined TEAM for a Livable Vancouver.
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Vancouver City Councilwoman Colleen Hardwick plans to seek a mayoral nomination for a new municipal party.
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Hardwick, who resigned from the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) in April to sit as an independent, announced Wednesday that he has joined TEAM for a Livable Vancouver and now represents the newly formed party on the council.
The goal, he said in an interview Wednesday, would be for the party to win a majority in the council and change the direction of the city.
“Running as an independent would not be helpful,” he said when asked about the momentum behind the new party. “I would be in the same boat.”
“If you want to correct the course, you need six people to all go in the same direction and (in their founding) work with the residents and the people of the city.”
The new TEAM, named after the original Voters Action Movement (TEAM) founded by Hardwick’s father and three-term Vancouver Councilman Walter Hardwick and former Mayor Art Phillips in 1968, will put Vancouver residents and their neighborhoods first, Hardwick promised.
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“I have found that the city now tends to be corporate by nature and applies its policies from the top down rather than from the bottom up,” he said. “I have attended countless public meetings to listen to a public that feels disenfranchised and that feels they are not being heard.”
Hardwick said there is a “disconnect between the city council and Vancouver’s working families” and criticized politicians for their “vain projects” and an “bloated” city council that takes too long to get things done.
Hardwick wants an overhaul of the city’s financial plan to address what he described as a structural problem in which the city continues to try to find ways to generate revenue, including from real estate developers, to pay for programs and liabilities discharged from developers. higher levels of government. .
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“We need to slow down,” he said, adding that the city has become dependent on development contributions to pay for action on climate change, social change or affordable housing, issues that are historically out of the reach of local government.
Other people on the founding board of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver Association include filmmaker David Fine, IT consultant and SFU student Sean Nardi, retired educator Sal Robinson, and architect David Wong.
The group has been meeting for several months to discuss solutions to problems including Vancouver’s livability, the housing crisis, and concerns about crime and public safety in some neighborhoods.
Hardwick resigned from the NPA in April, along with fellow councilors Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung, after months of infighting between the NPA’s elected committee and its board of directors and shortly after the NPA board appointed the commissioner of the park board John Coupar as its mayor. candidate for 2022.
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At the time, Hardwick called the appointment a “backroom deal.” The NPA president responded by saying that the three councilors who resigned were also named NPA candidates in 2018.
On Wednesday, Hardwick said that he had not liked the process at the time, but that he could not speak publicly against it. “So I complained about that. I would have preferred to win in an open and transparent process ”.
The new TEAM will conduct an open nomination process to select party candidates for mayor, council, park board and school board early next year, Hardwick said. “Let’s lead by example.”
Vancouver’s next municipal election is still over a year away, but there is already a packed field of mayoral candidates.
Mayor Kennedy Stewart, who ran as an independent in 2018, plans to seek re-election, while veteran political organizer Mark Marissen is also tossing his hat into the ring for the highest job in town.
Coupar will run for mayor under the NPA banner, while former NPA mayoral candidate Ken Sim had said he plans to seek the mayoral nomination for A Better City, a new party launched in April.
Reference-vancouversun.com