Advance Richmond elects three councillors in Richmond municipal election

Richmond residents knew the new city council would look very different going into the Oct. 17 municipal election. Four of the eight councillors were not seeking re-election: Kash Heed ran for mayor, Alexa Loo retired, and Bill McNulty and Chak Au were representing Richmond in Ottawa. The four incumbents who ran were all re-elected: RITE Richmond’s Carol Day, Laura Gillanders and Michael Wolfe, and Richmond United’s Andy Hobbs.

Advance Richmond elected three councillors: Gary Law, who topped the polls, Sheldon Starrett and Kevin Lai. Kenny Chiu, who ran with the Common Sense slate, will also join council.

At Advance Richmond’s election night watch party, Starrett said he had promised to end what he called “drug sites,” referring to temporary modular housing. “I must deliver that promise,” he told the crowd. “And I promise you, I will make Richmond end all these drug sites.” He said Vancouver’s election results would lead to “more drug sites.” Calling Vancouver “socialist left-wing,” he said Richmond needed to be “the bulwark against these insane left-wing drug and housing policies.”

In Vancouver, the right-wing ABC party was largely wiped out on city council, the park board and the school board. Voters also replaced ABC Mayor Ken Sim with Green Party candidate Pete Fry.

RITE Richmond, which ran only city council candidates, waited for results at the Vancouver Austria Club on Westminster Highway. Day said she was “excited” to work with the new councillors, adding that “it’ll be interesting to see how they adapt to council life.” She called the election, which had 55 city council candidates, a “train wreck because there was so much going on.”

“Unfortunately, the B.C. government decided to hold an election one week after ours,” Day said. “So I think a lot of the voters were just overwhelmed with the information, and they were limited in the decisions that they could make, the votes that they could make, and that has definitely affected our democratic process.”

Gillanders said some new councillors campaigned with “misinformation,” claiming that “existing councillors all want drug sites, as they call them, that we’re promoting drugs.” She said they would quickly learn that municipal council does not deal with drugs, health care, addiction, treatment or detox. “We deal with roads and we deal with heritage and we deal with public works and parks, and we read a massive amount of material every week. We’re on committees dealing with every single part of how to run a city. And these guys haven’t shown any interest in learning about any of those things,” she said.

Gillanders added that she could work with “anyone.” The new councillors would have to “step up and figure out what council is all about,” she said. “I’m happy to set a good example. Just keep doing the work, keep believing in Richmond. And I hope at some point we all can come together and get on the same page.”

With files from Richmond News staff.