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Nick Davies, candidate for mayor.

We need to improve our competitive position

Name: Nick Davies

Age: 53

Website: www.nickdavies.ca

Occupation: Lawyer

Last book read: The 2014 Report, a book that was written in the mid-80s as a novel but projecting how the world might progress between the mid-80s and 2014 in terms of economic issues, scientific issues, technological issues. I re-read it every three or four years.

What music are you listening to these days? I’ve always liked Neil Young, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, U2… they’re kind of my favourite musicians, but a band I’ve been listening to lately is Gotan Project.

Favourite recreational pursuits: Skiing and flying.

1. Why are you running for mayor?

I’ve done two terms on council and I feel I’m at the point where intellectually I’ve done as much as I can on council. So I suppose I’m at the point where I feel I have to move on to the next level, or get on to something else in my life.

2/3. What are the biggest issues facing Whistler? What needs to be done to address those issues?

The most vexing issue that we have at the moment is the economy. I don’t by any means suggest that we should abandon all other values except the economic value, but I believe we have focused too much on the social and environmental issues, and we lost our focus on the economic issues. We’re not as competitive in the marketplace as we should be and I think that there are things that we can do to improve our competitive position.

I think we have to recognize that we are a resort community, and the community itself is part of the industry of our town. This village is part of the industry of this town. And we are responsible for many aspects of this village that contribute to our competitiveness.

There’s going to be sort of a joint venture between the municipality, Tourism Whistler and the chamber to put (a tourism development) office in place. So I ask what is that office’s role going to be, and my understanding is 75 per cent management consulting-type stuff and only 25 per cent driving tourism. And if you reduce the problem that we’ve got to its absolute fundamental level, it’s that people in other parts of the world that make the buying decisions… are not making the buying decision to come to Whistler.

Tourism Whistler and Intrawest both keep consistently telling us that the number one problem we’ve got is air access…. We’ve got to improve the air access situation.

Another large issue is the cost of housing. In my view it goes back to the economy. We’ve got housing projects in the pipeline that are pretty close to going into the ground…. but we have to be careful to manage how much housing we build. The Whistler 2020 document calls for 75 per cent of our employees to be housed in Whistler. At the moment 75 per cent of our employees are housed in Whistler. (But) the reason 75 per cent are housed at the moment is our economy has retracted….

I think Nancy Wilhelm-Morden made a good point, that the community does not feel as engaged (about the 2010 Games) as a community is entitled to feel…. I think there needs to be more reporting back to the community…. I think the increasing frustration we’re seeing from the community is they’re hearing about these things happening but there is no easy, reliable place to get information. (We could help by) reconfiguring the mission of the 2010 information centre… and using digital technology and the Internet more effectively….

I’m really concerned about the financial tools issue. My view is that was one of our legacies, and the strategy was that we would have new ways to obtain money… that would allow us to maximize the opportunity for the Games.

I think we can do better… as a municipal organization. It’s clear that people want more engagement. The answer that we always got as councillors as to why we didn’t have town hall meetings was that people stopped coming. But, I think we learned something from the arena, and that is that good community consultation leads to better decisions.

4. How will Whistler 2020 help us?

The strength of the 2020 document is it gives us a plan, and it gives us a clear idea of where we need to be going, but it also gives us a set of values against which to measure everything we need to do. That document contains a vision of the future, and we might not get to the vision… but nonetheless the 2020 document gives us a set of values to inform the decisions as to wherever it is that we’re going.

5. Name three things you expect to accomplish in this term.

One of the things is to bring a different style of leadership to the mayor’s chair. We need a mayor who is prepared to do more than simply herd people along. What we need is a mayor who is prepared to say to council, this is our mission, this is what we agreed on at the beginning of the term and we’re getting off track here.

I think the municipality can make a significant contribution toward turning the economy around in this community and I’ve got a load of ideas that we can think about and we can think about implementing via the tourism development office and with the co-operation of our partners…. So I think there’s a change in attitude that we could accomplish in this term, to be much more competitive.

I think the third thing we can accomplish is to move a long way to delivering the employee housing that we need.



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