After nine years in the political arena, Squamish Coun. Patricia Heintzman is bidding adieu.
On Monday, Sept. 29, the long-time Squamish resident officially announced her name wouldn’t be on the ballot in the upcoming municipal election. It was a tough decision, Heintzman said. Beside’s sitting on the District of Squamish council, Heintzman has served on the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District board for six years. She’s currently chair of the board, a position she would have to give up once she’s no longer a councillor.
“I think it is time to expand my mind elsewhere,” Heintzman said. “I’ve always been a bit of an accidental politician anyway.”
Provincial and federal parties have asked Heintzman to join their banners, however, it’s not something she said she’s currently interested in. While she’s not willing to be a backbencher, Heintzman said she’s not ruling out working with government in some capacity.
As a politician, Heintzman said she’s proud of the changes she helped create to incorporation the environment into policy decision-making. There are more bike lanes in Squamish as a result and environmental components of the Official Community Plan (OCP).
“We didn’t have an OCP with any measure of how to be sustainable of how to be green and how to be progressive,” Heintzman said. “I brought the idea of tackling climate change to the floor on my first term.”
Over the last six years the environment seems to have fallen on the backburner, she said. For a while the district didn’t have an environmental co-coordinator. Then the provincial and federal government downloaded riparian responsibilities to municipalities.
“Now our environmental department focuses solely on riparian development issues and doesn’t focus on the development of boarder policy and strategy,” Heintzman said.
Long-term vision is a missing ingredient at municipal hall, she continued. Council gets so bogged down dealing with daily decisions, that haphazard programs are pieced together, she said. In the end, district staff hand council their vision, Heintzman noted.
“I think that at council chambers — and that is where the community expects leadership and decisions to come from — that is not happening at that level,” she said.
Moving forward Heintzman said she hopes to see a well-rounded group of people on council. Council needs to be more strategic in its planning and critical thinking, she said. It’s easy for a politician to have a strong opinion, but it’s more difficult for an individual to ask the right questions and remain open-mined until the last minute as to not discount people’s opinions.
“The trick is figuring out who you think will make a good team, who will work well together, who will bring broad opinion to the table so that you can actually have some discourse and dialogue,” Heintzman said.
