Mayor Patricia Heintzman is comfortable in the mayor’s chair in more ways than one. Her office at muni hall is full of Squamishy things she’s collected over her term since taking the helm in 2014.
Paintings by local artists adorn the walls, thriving greenery sits on the coffee table and her cruiser bike leans against the back door.
In the upcoming municipal election, Heintzman hopes to keep the office and be re-elected as mayor.
Municipal government has been her life for 13 years. She was first elected to Squamish council in 2005.
What follows is an edited version of a wide-ranging, almost two-hour conversation on a variety of topics of concern to Squamish residents.
Q: There’s a tangible backlash from some local residents to Squamish’s growth. What is your take on this tension?
A: Yes, I have had people come into my drop-in events and ask if we can’t just turn off the tap — stop so many people from coming here.
A lot of people think that we can.
For example, they think we can just say no to a building permit. We cannot legally tell someone who owns private property that they can’t build something they are allowed to build. We can’t legally say no to a development permit if they have met our guidelines.
We can say no to a rezoning, which doesn’t mean they can’t develop their land; it just means they can’t develop it to the extent they would like to.
And you have to weigh the consequences of saying no to that. Do you put a monopoly in a small group of landowners’ hands so that prices go up even more?
There’s already been a ton of land that is zoned that is ready to go, that could be built, regardless of if we say yes or no to a rezoning application.
When prices started to go up, we had a lot of land in very few landowners’ hands and they controlled the supply. Developers will not flood a market to bring prices down. They simply won’t do it.
So if you can diversify the number of entities that own land, you at least get competition, which hopefully brings more supply and brings prices down.
It isn’t as simple as turning off the tap.
[See Heintzman’s column this week on A11 for more on the old versus new tension in Squamish.]
Q: What about tourism? Can the District do anything about the increase, if you wanted to?
A: I know it is challenging for people. I feel it too — that it is busy. It is an evolution. Some people like it, some people don’t like it.
Lots of things have contributed to the increase, but a significant factor — and we knew back in 2004 it would be — was the highway improvement. At the time, it was welcomed here because we were quite stifled economically. The forest industry was challenged; mills were shutting, so we thought it was a good thing.
We knew more people would want to live here and that it would also open up the doors to much more tourism. Obviously, the gondola has also been a driver of tourism; the music festival was a massive branding of Squamish that changed how people perceived Squamish, too.
The irony is we aren’t alone in this phenomenon. Mission is going through the same thing, and Maple Ridge and Chilliwack. Lillooet is booming for the first time in 30 years. I see it as this big pulse, which is Metro Vancouver, and it is exploding out, and any town on its periphery is getting sprayed. We are in the spray zone. It is a challenge, but you think of other places that are completely stagnant or are losing employment, and there are worse problems we could have.
Q: With the $100 million in infrastructure upgrades needed in the district, how is that going to be managed in council’s next term?
A: The tax base is going to pay for some of it, borrowing is going to pay for some of it, but because we have been so strategic in our master plans this has started to materialize in funding from the federal and provincial governments.
One of the things I am proud of — that started a bit before I was mayor but that we have made foundational this term — is we have really good master plans and strategies for all of our infrastructure, and we layer those within our five and 10-year financial plans.
For example, we have an asset management plan, a sewer and water plan, a liquid waste management plan, a parks and recreation master plan, we have a transportation master plan and a flood hazard management plan, which is probably the best one in the province. We have done all of our homework.
If you talk to our auditors or other places, we are so far ahead of most communities in terms of our community planning and our financial planning. We aren’t perfect, don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to sugar coat this, but we have done an excellent job.
The one thing we underestimated was the recreation services. At the beginning of this term; we challenged staff to increase usage of Brennan Park because not many were going there. We said we needed more programming and needed more people using it.
It is now bursting. [There were close to 500,000 visits to Brennan Park Recreation Centre in 2017. ]
We are now trying to blue sky what to do at Brennan Park.
Of course, we have to bring our expectations down to reality and what we can afford.
Q: Let’s talk taxes. Have business and residential taxes been fair under your term?
A: You get more value for money in your property taxes — believe it or not — than you do for a lot of other things.
For every 75 cents a house pays in taxes, they get a dollar in service, for example.
But you have to look back to understand where we are today regarding taxation. Back in 2006, the Woodfibre mill closed down. It was almost a $2 million hit into what was, at the time, a $17 million budget. That was huge. At that time we were at about 14,000 people. Then we were over 15,000, so we got hit with more of the share of the RCMP budget. So the last 10 to 12 years have been challenging from a taxation point of view. Combine that with infrastructure that was built in the 60s and 70s. It all was coming to its end of life.
It used to be the industrial base completely subsidized the residential base.
If and when Woodfibre LNG is up and running, and we have that taxation I want to see that it doesn’t just go into the general operational taxation. Particularly in the early years, you want to put it in reserves and toward capital projects, particularly rehabilitation infrastructure projects. It is not a predictable, resilient funding source. It is about diversifying your economy, so you don’t get impacted so dramatically when economies in certain sectors take a hit.
I would like to see us completely modernize how we do assessments and the categorizations we do for assessments. For example this year, our downtown businesses got dinged massively because BC Assessment evaluated them for highest and best use, that they can go up to six stories so they are paying much more than what the actual value is. That is one of the reasons council decided to lower Cleveland Avenue down to four stories, to help with tax rates for mom and pop shops along Cleveland.
Q: This term is likely when Woodfibre will be operational. How do you see your relationship with the company as the project comes to fruition?
A: I am not personally supportive of the project, but I have always been respectful and open to conversation and maintained my integrity in that regard. You have to always be respectful, and you have to always be fair. That is all you can do.
As a councillor, you have more freedom to be vociferous about something. As mayor, when the council decides something, you have the role and responsibility of advocating and articulating that decision.
Q: What is the latest with the motor fuel tax?
A: There’s a long history to this. The push right now doesn’t seem to be toward a motor fuel tax. About a year ago the local municipalities in the corridor and the SLRD met with Claire Trevena, the current Minister of Transportation to talk about regional transit and a possible fuel tax. She said the government might use the carbon fuel tax because they were considering it no longer being revenue neutral.
They want to do regional transit, and I think they are looking at the Sea to Sky as a pilot project for how governance might work.
So right now there isn’t a real push for a motor fuel tax.
About an hour ago I signed a memorandum of understanding between the First Nations and all the local governments to set up a governance model for a transportation commission. So that is where we are today. If the BC Transit plan moves through the provincial government appropriately, we hope to have some sort of regional transit service by fall of 2019. We are closer than we have been, ever. We’re hopeful, but we still have to figure out funding.
The flip side of this is the price of gas locally. I urge everyone in Squamish to go onto the Competition Bureau Canada website and fill out a form and make a complaint about the price of gas in Squamish. There is no reason why Squamish should not pay exactly what, say, Abbotsford is. This is just unfair gouging of our community.
Q: Would you like to see a housing authority in Squamish?
A: Absolutely. I think we are going to need a housing authority, particularly as we bring on more purpose-built rental. It is all about the timing. There’s no point having a housing authority until you have the units to manage. That has been council’s discussion, when is the right time to put the administrative function in place without wasting time and money, to have houses to manage. We currently have zero, though some have been promised.
Q: What would you like to see council do about vacation rentals?
A: They do serve a particular function. We only have so many hotel units and camping units, and it does bring a diversity of the experience. But there are too many of them. And I get why people offer them and find more freedom in it than the long-term rental. I think we would like to get to a system where we legitimize them, but if you are doing vacation rentals, you are then being taxed as a commercial entity — you are paying more taxes. They get a business license. They adhere to a safety code and building bylaws that all other businesses have to go through. And they would pay hotel room tax into that system. Right now it is not a level playing field.
Q: What are you proud of with this term?
A: I think council had a lot of political courage and conviction with things like Under One Roof and the Buckley Avenue proposal. Those types of things take political courage to do the right thing. I am proud of the council for doing that.
And I am very proud of how council and staff have been very strategic and done all of our homework with regard to our infrastructure and planning and having a very progressive financial plan to prioritize all that.
The stuff that I would like to have been proud of, that we have been working a lot on, are things like the educational campus down on the oceanfront. I have a meeting next week about it. It is still very much a live issue, but these things take some time. I would obviously have liked to have seen that.
You look at the amount of business activity and in the business park, I am quite proud of how the business community is starting to diversify, so I am proud of how the business community has evolved in the last couple of years. We are still not where we would like to be concerning the types of substantive jobs here that meet the talents of the community so we would have fewer commuters.
We aren’t playing the short game on economic development. We are playing the long game, but I am proud of where it has come.
Editor’s note: The Chief will also be sitting down with Coun. Susan Chapelle, who is also running for mayor.
