The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) all-candidates meeting was held Nov. 8 in Sechelt and questions from the community tackled a range of topics, from administration to the environment.
While all the candidates were invited to the Coast Reporter-sponsored forum, Mike Carson and Frank Mauro from Area A were unable to attend due to another forum being held in their local region put on by the Pender Harbour Chamber of Commerce.
Citizens in attendance were asked to write down their questions and their queries were randomly drawn for the candidates to respond.
One question asked if the candidates would support a full corporate review of the SCRD.
"I would want to know why there'd be somebody interested in doing that," Elphinstone incumbent Lorne Lewis said. "We're over six or seven years now of winning awards on financial reporting. Our financial clarity is quite good."
However, his opponent Laura Wallace advocated a review and raised the spectre of reducing staff hours to make room for more employees.
"It would be nice to see the SCRD move away from the big five banks," she added, suggesting that an audit could allow a transfer of regional funds to a local credit union.
Another question asked how each of the candidates would tackle the issue of illegal dumping, especially in the environmentally sensitive watershed areas.
Roberts Creek candidate Barbara Hague offered deer cameras as a potential solution. The heat-activated cameras are used by hunters to track the movement of wildlife in wooded areas and could be used to catch offenders at known dumping sites.
For Hans Penner, illegal dumping in watershed areas is one of the primary focuses of his campaign. He even suggested that should he be elected, the dumps would be cleaned up in the first week.
"They haven't even cleaned up the dump sites they knew about two years ago," he stressed.
Incumbent Donna Shugar said the difficulty rests with where many of the dumping sites are located. Often they are found on Crown land and outside of the SCRD's jurisdiction.
"It's amazing to me that people actually do this," she said. "We have undertaken a mapping project to map all the illegal dump sites in all the watersheds up and down the Sunshine Coast."
The candidates were later asked what they felt the SCRD's role should be in economic development on the Coast.
Halfmoon Bay incumbent Garry Nohr replied by pointing to the agricultural and tourism sectors. He also suggested that small businesses could be encouraged to develop strategies to market their operations as environmentally friendly.
"If we're putting money into the economy here through economic development, we want to keep it with the businesses that are here," he added.
His opponent, Roger Lagassé, stressed the need for the SCRD to play a role in ensuring that economic development is clean and livable.
"That's what I want to be dedicated to," he said, suggesting an engagement of the community to clean up the watershed as an example. "Once it's clean, it's more likely to stay clean."
Advance polling to elect the next SCRD board of directors began Nov. 9. Residents can also cast advance ballots on Nov. 16 before the Nov. 19 election date.
