There is a straightforward way to increase transparency at city hall—stream city committee meetings to Facebook Live, YouTube, and Twitter. Transparency isn’t only about the number of agenda items in the open portion of committee meetings. It’s also about making attendance accessible.

Rotating committee assignments would strengthen councillors by giving them a broader perspective of City Hall. It would also help develop better mayoral candidates, as those with broad council experience are in the best position to step in as new mayors. Leaders are created, not born.

City council needs help. Paying library board and police commission members would strengthen those boards and acknowledge the power of these independent boards. Serving on these boards develops the same types of skills required for serving on city council. We need be intentional about developing strong council candidates. Leaders are created, not born.

City council needs help. The unresponsiveness of city council is due to the concentration of decision making power. This causes a bottleneck. Divesting some decisions to the neighbourhood level would alleviate some of this burden. It helps everyone and engages more people in politics. But we need a neighbourhood proof-of-concept first. This is a big thing I'll be working on off council, starting in my own backyard—the SE Hill.

Incumbents have a big advantage. I hope this helps level the playing field. Good competition makes everyone better. It's a great job and I hope people take the leap and decide to run for city council!