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Communication backbone of Jack Crompton’s campaign

Whistler’s Jack Crompton has wanted to run for council for at least the past six years, but as the owner of Resort Cabs he has never had the time. Now, after selling the company this year, he says he is ready to run.
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Jack Crompton

Whistler’s Jack Crompton has wanted to run for council for at least the past six years, but as the owner of Resort Cabs he has never had the time. Now, after selling the company this year, he says he is ready to run.

“I was always too busy, but I would watch council meeting on TV, I would go to meetings, and would involve myself as much as I possibly could,” he said. “Now that I’ve sold the company, and just have another smaller company that I don’t have to spend a lot of time on, I’m free to serve.”

There are a number of issues that Crompton feels are important, but his main reason for running is to improve communication between the municipality and the community.

“I’ve really wanted more community engagement,” he said. “I think the open house project, with all these major capital expenditures in the past six years, isn’t working — holding open houses and expecting everyone to show up. I would be more proactive and use technology to engage people. My hope is to connect the community to council so council understands what the community wants, and the community knows what big decisions are coming.”

Crompton is not critical of the current council, but agrees that it has been a tough three years with a lot of difficult decisions.

“I think it’s going to get even tougher,” he said. “I agree with Eckhard (Zeidler) and his analysis that council is going to have to make some really tough decisions in the future, regarding the budget especially. I’m up for the challenge, nobody has ever accused me of being thin-skinned.”

Another key issue that interests Crompton is the health of small business in Whistler.

“We have to make sure our small businesses are successful. We’ve lost a tremendous amount of great small businesses in the last few years and we need to do a better job hanging on to them. The last thing I want to see is Whistler go corporate — we need our corporate partners obviously, but without small businesses Whistler is in trouble.”

As well, Crompton wants the next council to do more to pursue short-term employee housing.

“Phoenix was a great idea, and I’d like to see the next mayor and council revisit something like Phoenix — not solely for seasonal workers, but also for small businesses that are suffering because they can’t keep people. At Resort Cabs we lost 40 per cent of the people we hired to Revelstoke, Golden, Fernie, Big White and other places because they couldn’t find housing.”

Crompton has been coming to Whistler his entire life with his family, which built a home in Alta Vista in 1966. He moved to Whistler in 1999, and has three young children.

He also has a website at www.jackcrompton.ca.