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Looking back, looking ahead |
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Written by MARK NIELSEN
Citizen staff
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Friday, 16 May 2008 |
After 12 years in the mayor’s office, Colin Kinsley will be leaving the chair to a new mayor this November. (Citizen photo by Brent Braaten)
The Citizen's city hall reporter, Mark Nielsen, sat down with Kinsley this week to talk about his time as mayor, the direction the city has taken under his watch and what his successor and residents can expect in the years to come.
What have you been most proud of during your time as mayor?
Kinsley said the "day-to-day pleasure" was helping people with small problems but while that may have been important, getting Prince George onto the "world map" was his biggest accomplishment.
"I thought from the beginning back in 1996 that Prince George was no longer in competition with other British Columbia municipalities ... it was fastly-approaching global competition to grow our economy. Intelligence is so rapid and capital is fluid and you can do anything anywhere, so getting us on that world stage was important to me."
Kinsley said the contacts he established may not have always reaped immediate dividends, but could help five years down the road. He added that the city has a "huge amount of expertise" in skills not just related to sawmilling and forestry, but transferable to mining, oil and gas and other industries.
"Some of these tradespeople we have in this community truly are inventors and artists and those are the skills we use to take our product to the world," Kinsley said.
Why such an emphasis on China?
Kinsley, who has traveled extensively to China, said Canada as a whole has been slow off the mark in terms of establishing a presence in an economy that has been growing 10 per cent a year, but there is still a huge opportunity for this region's forest sector to benefit.
"And I'm not talking single-family houses, that's not going to happen," he said. "Single-family houses take up too much ground."
Rather, it's finding roles for the region's products in construction of the nine-storey dwellings typical throughout the country, as well as providing the furnishings and trimming inside once they're completed.
The recent earthquake in Sichuan province will convince the Chinese to use more timber in their construction, Kinsley predicted. "It's so much more resilient to seismic activity," he said.
South Korea and India are two countries that should also get more attention in Kinsley's opinion, in part because they're democracies and, in the case of India, the connections Prince George already has through the city's Sikh community.
"I'm not familiar with the Indian market in terms of housing," he said. "I've only talked to the Chinese and Koreans, but I would like to know more about India."
Is the city's downtown heading in the right direction?
"We're pointed in the right direction, we just haven't got rolling yet," Kinsley said and reiterated his argument that downtown revitalization can begin only with urbanization and convincing people to start living downtown.
He pointed to Robson Street in Vancouver as an example of what he would like to see.
"There are more buskers and panhandlers there on that one street than even live in Prince George and yet you virtually don't notice," he said. "You don't notice them because there's little shops all over the place that are open late, the sidewalks are full, people live right there in highrises behind these little storefronts."
Kinsley said he recently spoke to Yves Ghiai, the San Francisco developer who has not yet started work on a condominium project announced just before the last civic election, and was told he remains interested.
Kinsley added John Major still plans to build a handful of townhouses next to the Chances gaming centre.
"As people move in, we will have to spend more time on some of the other issues as well. It's almost lockstep," he said and added the Friendship Lodge project is a good step.
"(Street people) are not bad people," he said. "A lot of them are people suffering from mental illnesses, which leads to substance abuse and it's a never-ending cycle downward and hopefully this transition home is the first of many opportunities to assist people who find themselves caught in that."
Air quality is a big issue right now. Can anymore be done and how much credit can the People's Action Committee for Healthy Air take for the progress that's been made?
Kinsley listed several steps that have been taken to lower the amount of particulate matter in the city's air: establishing monitoring stations; using cracked pumice for ice control downtown; adding water to street sweepers to reduce dust; buying a street sweeper equipped with a vacuum to pick up the sand and dirt rather than sweeping it; requiring new developments to be paved more quickly; gradually paving over the city's gravel roads.
He noted that the Mayor's Task Force on Air Quality Improvement was announced during the 2005 election campaign, well before PACHA got going midway through 2006. But there were delays in getting the task force going, beginning with the resignation of Charles Jago as chairman over a perceived conflict of interest when he was named a director for the Canfor pulp income trust.
The task force's final report came out a year later than originally intended, but Kinsley said it's been acted upon immediately by council.
As for the controversy over the idea of placing a biomass plant near the downtown, Kinsley said he recognizes the battle has been lost in the court of public opinion.
"We'll get there, we'll just do it in a different way," he said. "Maybe we can partner with industry and do it that way.
"But all this backyard burning contributes so much more, the volumes are huge, and if we had a place where people could bring their clippings off of their trees and that sort of stuff, it would make a huge difference."
Regarding PACHA, Kinsley said it's a group with a strong interest in the airshed, but noted that PACHA was launched only after Betty Bekkering and Jo Graber failed to get elected to city council in 2005.
He also said the city had already had been working long and hard on convincing the provincial government to introduce tougher regulations for emissions from asphalt plants well before it became an issue in the public's view.
Is there any unfinished business?
Kinsley said he continues to hope for establishment of major manufacturing in the area, possibly through a partnership with a Chinese company.
"Not a chopstick factory, but something with some meat," he said and went on to emphasize the abundance of natural resources in this area combined with the educational opportunities.
"We are destined to be a place, I think, where manufacturing is going to take place," he said. "Maybe not finished products, it may be parts and pieces, but there's a lot to be said about parts and pieces."
As well, he said his effort to establish a Canadian Forces primary reserve unit in Prince George has been slow going. The unit would not only provide opportunities for young people but would have been very useful during the flood incidents last spring and this winter.
On the bright side, he said all of the city's bridges are well on the way to being twinned -- Kinsley hopes to see the Cameron Street Bridge project completed by the end of his term in November -- which will help get Prince George's goods to market. Moreover, he added, the relocation of the weigh scales to south of Red Rock is also close to realization.
"You know, there isn't a lot left, and that's why it's time for me to go," he said. "It's time for someone with a new list, a new vision. I still have lots of energy, but I don't have a new list."
How would you describe Prince George?
"It's vibrant, it's fiercely independent," Kinsley said. "People in Prince George have a we-can-do-it attitude. People in Prince George do not take no for an answer."
It's an attitude he's noticed ever since he came here in 1971 and pointed to the campaigns to establish the University of Northern British Columbia and later, a medical school, as examples of the community involvement in the city.
During a 1988 campaign, some 16,000 people paid $5 to sign a petition calling for the university and $250,000 was raised to pay for an initial study and in 2000 about 7,500 people packed what was then the Multiplex to make the provincial government aware of concerns over local health care.
What do you see in the future for Prince George?
Once the tough times in forestry are over, Kinsley believes the city will grow rapidly.
"The city is going to be, I believe, the transportation hub for North America," he said.
Reasons listed by Kinsley included plans to quadruple the size of the container terminal in Prince Rupert, the flattest railway grade from west to east in North America, the abundance of available land in and around the city, extension of the airport runway to handle large jets and a possible establishment of a free-trade manufacturing and assembly zone near the airport.
He also predicted more government services will be established in the city and looks forward to expanded post-secondary education opportunities and Prince George Regional Hospital being designated a teaching hospital.
Such steps will reduce the city's reliance on forestry, he said, but added plenty of progress has already been made on that front.
"If this were five years ago, the perfect storm of the high Canadian duty, the 15-per-cent duty, the collapse of the U.S. housing market the mountain pine beetle, we'd be like a ghost town," he said. "But diversification has kept us afloat and will continue for awhile. I just don't think the U.S. housing market is going to rebound as quickly as some people think."
What will be some of the challenges for the new mayor?
Along with dealing with the downturn in forestry, dealing with the new economies of the green agenda will be a major task in Kinsley's view.
"It's all very good, don't get me wrong," Kinsley said. "I'm just saying it's going to be a challenge."
Even the carbon tax is a good thing, he said, and while he believed northerners should get a break on the tax in acknowledgment of the higher costs they face, they shouldn't get an outright exemption.
He supports getting the municipalities' portion back in the form of support for energy-reduction initiatives like retrofitting buildings, improving public transit and expanding the city's biodiesel fleet.
The new mayor will also have to be "very, very communicative" in terms of bringing new industry to the city while maintaining the integrity of the airshed.
"If they want to build something, they have to prove to the people it's not going to be a problem," he said. "And that's going to be a challenge, but it's doable."
Establishing contacts as a new mayor and maintaining the city's profile will also be important.
"My advice would be to be very aggressive, be proud of this city because we have lots to be proud of, particularly with the people, and don't be afraid to share that with other government officials, don't be afraid to demand our fair share because we produce so much in northern B.C. and share it with everybody else."
How would you like to be remembered as mayor?
For his work ethic and his integrity.
"Integrity is something you can't purchase, no matter what, and work ethic is something that was instilled in me from a very young age and has stayed with me," he said. "But if you love your work, it doesn't take much to have a strong work ethic."
On that note, Kinsley said every day as mayor has brought a new challenge, he's learned so much about many different issues, met so many new people and, of course, traveled extensively to places he never would have visited otherwise.
What will you do once your term has ended?
Kinsley will be 63 years old at that point, so stock car racing is out of the question, although he does plan to continue taking in the occasional NASCAR weekend south of the border.
But he does intend on doing some part-time work "because I can't imagine going from 80 hours a week to nothing, I can't sit still."
What form that will take, he could not say, but he was one of the first people to sign up as volunteer for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games and he may register as a lobbyist, "but that's so speculative."
He's also thinking of trekking through Cambodia and Vietnam as a way to combine some peace and quiet with a little bit of adventure.
Otherwise, it's spending time with grandchildren at his place on Cluculz Lake.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 16 May 2008 )
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