Burnaby city councillor Colleen Jordan hopes the new mayor and council will be respectful and collegial, even after what she called the “nastiest campaign” she’s ever been through.
The last council meeting with Derek Corrigan at the helm takes place on Monday, with many regular items like the proclamation of poppy weeks and adoption awareness month, a report on construction activity, demolition authorizations, grant funding and a liquor license application. Then the week after, a new mayor will be sworn into office.
“My whole political career (Corrigan has) been at the helm, so it’s going to be very sad I think, very different moving forward,” Jordan said.
On Nov. 5, Mike Hurley will be sworn in as mayor of Burnaby along with seven Burnaby Citizens’ Association councillors and one Green councillor, Joe Keithley.
“I don’t think I’ve come to grips with the whole thing,” Jordan said, but, she added, the people of Burnaby sent a message they wanted some change, but not an almost complete turnover like in Surrey where the ruling party was almost decimated.
“I hope we can be respectful and collegial – we have a role to play,” she said. “The campaign was the nastiest I’ve experienced – that’s over now and we have to go to work for the good of the city.”
But she does think the new mayor and new councillor have a steep learning curve, based on what they were campaigning on, for example, criticizing the reserves held by the city, much of which is allocated to projects that can’t be altered, and the housing issue which she said the city is limited on doing much about.
“There’s going to be some recognition of the legal authority that council has to do things and not do things,” Jordan said.
However, much of what council does is the day-to-day running of the city and she doesn’t think that’s going to be very controversial.
“There’s going to be steep learning curve for the new people and then, in other respects, I don’t think the day-to-day business we do is so controversial,” Jordan said.
Jordan said she’s known Hurley for about 25 years through the labour movement, but their relationship has been “strained” over the past few months because of the campaign. She said the BCA tried to take the high road and not respond to their challengers, but a lot of the messaging was amplified on social media.
“There’s some pretty heated exchanges, pretty heated things said about the incumbent mayor and council, more so that I’ve ever seen in the past – so that takes a while to get over as well,” she said.
