Voters will have five new Burnaby Citizens Association trustee candidates to choose from this fall.
On April 29, the NDP-affiliated municipal party nominated five new candidates for school board: Bill Brassington Jr., Peter Cech, Surash Bhayana, Jen Mezei and Ryan Stewart.
Trustees Gary Wong and Larry Hayes are the only current members of the board who will run again Oct. 20.
Current chair Ron Burton, who will have served 31 years on the board by the end of this term, said he is stepping down to spend more time with his two-year-old grandson, of whom he has full custody with his wife.
The veteran trustee said the BCA’s new blood will be good for the school board.
“You don’t want to get too stagnant, fresh ideas,” he said.
Current school board vice-chair Baljinder Narang has been nominated to run for city council.
Meiling Chia, currently serving her second term, did not put her name forward to run again.
Harman Pandher, also in his second term, originally put his name forward for both school board and city council but then withdrew his bid for both before the nomination meeting for “personal reasons,” he said.
“I felt this was a good enough time to have devoted, seven years of my life, to school board,” he told the NOW. “I’m not ruling out a run in the future, but at this time it just wasn’t the right time personally for council, and even just maybe the dynamics of the municipal scene at this time is not right for me to put my name forward, and I’m fine with that.”
