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Council candidate: Steve Milstein

Age: 66 Website: www.talkwithmewhistler.com Occupation : Psychologist Last book read : Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy By Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton and Clare Pain.
1545milstein

Age: 66

Website: www.talkwithmewhistler.com

Occupation : Psychologist

Last book read : Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy By Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton and Clare Pain.

What music are you listening to these days? I don’t listen to a lot of music. I listen to a lot of CBC and whatever is on the radio. I’m more of a news junkie.

Favourite recreational pursuits: Cooking. I like to entertain friends and I cook everything from scratch. I also like gardening, walking, and lying in sun.

 

1. Why are you running for council?

I am a believer that you get out of life and out of a community what you put into a community. Secondly I think we have a social responsibility to our society and to our neighbours. I think I am very lucky because I have gotten an education, and I have had opportunity and look where I live. I believe the only way to have a healthy community is for everyone in the community to take responsibility for the health of their community and their neighbours. I do not believe that council and government staff can do it all.

When I moved here, I was very struck by the volunteerism in town. I believe it is what made this town. I think you have to make a difference, and I believe I have skills that can help make a difference.

 

2. Given that revenue from development is declining and the municipality is more dependent on hotel tax revenue at a time of economic uncertainty, how do you propose the municipality balance its budgets the next few years?

I believe we need to sit down and make a distinction between our needs and our wants. Needs are something we cannot do without, and wants are something you would like to have. I think we need to prioritize.

There is no question that the hotel tax revenue is going to be down. I think the first job of council is to get in there with staff and see what we can postpone. I do not think there is any magic answer. I think we have to stop our spending and see where we can go with it. We are at risk for a lot of things right now.

 

3. What other important issues does Whistler face in the next three years?

I have a couple of main issues. The first one is the financial sustainability. When I talk about financial sustainability, I mean living within our means. I am not saying financial accountability. That is something that happens after the fact. When you are sustainable, you are accountable.

Second is strengthening the role of the community. I believe the community is what it is as a result of a lot of volunteer time. We have the capital in this town with lots of bright, skilled people who have given themselves. I think we need to energize those people and get them involved in some of our policy decisions more than we have.

We need to strengthen the non-profit and volunteer sector. While we need to balance the budget, we should not cut non-profit. That is one area I would rather see more investment than there is currently. I think there is much more leverage. I think we need to increase our CEP (Community Enrichment Program).

We need to review our business model. I see where we live as a wonderful environment with human capital and great infrastructure that we put in to place. I think we now need to find out is there value in institutes of higher learning. We known there is value in art as a business. I do believe those are real important things. We have to expand what we do.

One other issue is housing for seasonal employees. I think there is a real potent solution to that. It is not mine, but one that I learned about talking to developers and business people. What would happen if the municipality would swap land in the athletes’ village with Rainbow or the native groups that hold land? It looks like the business owners are willing to make some investments. There are lots of things we could be doing, and the developers have a lot of creative ideas about how it could be financed.

I think there are real issues in terms of our processes and how we approve projects. From what I understand it takes longer here than most communities in Canada. That is costly. I think there are issues out there about post occupancy space.

I’m not giving solutions here. The campaigning period is not the time to do that.

 

4. What needs to be done to address those issues?

The first thing that has to be addressed is process. Rather than council sitting down and making all the decisions, we have to take a look at how we are going to get our citizenry involved. I believe developers, for example, are more capable of coming to a solution to seasonal housing. We need more process to bring the community in to help resolve issues.

I have lots of ideas, but a lot of things that have happened for me in this campaign have been by talking to people. That has informed me, once again, that there are more solutions out in the community than in a group of seven people.



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