Kobayashi’s to-do list starts with revoking pay increase for council

Mayor-elect Doug Kobayashi has a to-do list ready for Colwood council. Elected over incumbent Mayor Rob Martin with 68% of the vote, he spent the first few days feeling surprised and a little overwhelmed, but has now rolled up his sleeves.

His first task is to revoke the remuneration increase for council, which was set to take effect in January. Kobayashi argued and voted against the increase in September, saying now is not the time for increases but for fiscal responsibility. Expect to see that item on the Nov. 7 council agenda. Re-elected councillor Cynthia Day was also opposed, while Dean Jantzen voted in favour. Each of the new councillors-elect—Kim Jordison, Ian Ward, Misty Olsen, and David Grove—said while an increase may be warranted, the increase the current council agreed to was too much too fast, and each said they would support a new review.

The core of Kobayashi’s campaign was to improve consultation at City Hall, and he has several ideas to address public engagement. First is restarting citizen advisory committees, similar to what Langford and Saanich have. Instead of council and staff making up each of the committees, Kobayashi is looking for Colwood residents with subject matter expertise to join the advisory committees to guide things like parks and recreation, planning and development, and arts and culture. He’ll release the full list of committees next week.

With those new committees, he plans to scrap the Committee of the Whole, meetings that were “just silliness,” he believes. “Here we were as councillors, sitting around the table, speaking to no one and then we're making recommendations to ourselves in council.”

He also plans to host town halls, at minimum twice a year, and restart coffee chats with council where the public can come talk with any council member in person, rather than writing emails or speaking at public hearings.

The million-dollar question in any municipality is: how can they meaningfully engage with residents? Residents often aren’t aware of a decision that affects them until well after the plans are in process. Kobayashi and his new council are already looking for answers to that question.

“Everything's up for grabs right now. There's no sacred cows here,” he said, meaning, every idea is on the table—ideas like moving the public hearings for rezoning applications earlier in the process so people don’t feel like it’s too late to make changes by the time they have a chance to be heard.

This focus on improving public engagement might cause a delay in development in Colwood, Kobayashi admitted. But with rising interest rates, development might slow down regardless, he said.

As for the Westshore, he and the other mayors-elect, all new, are planning to meet before they take their seats, and have committed to working collaboratively. Kobayashi sees potential for integrating services with other municipalities, like they did with fire fighting mutual aid agreements between 2017 and 2018.