Chrest won’t seek third term

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2022 (1459 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After 19 years as a member of Brandon City Council, including the last eight as mayor, Rick Chrest will not seek re-election this fall.

Chrest, who will turn 63 in April, made the announcement to the Sun earlier this week, saying he and his wife Karen want to enter a new chapter in their lives that allows them more time to spend with their family, especially their granddaughter born last year.

“The city is 140 years old and I’ll have gotten to be the custodian for eight years,” Chrest said when asked if he was tempted to run again. “There was lots and lots that happened before I got there, 130 years worth, and it’ll go on for a long, long time after I’m done.”

Though there are plenty of ongoing projects from his tenure in office still left to be completed, he said if he waited until they were completed before stepping away, more things would pop up and he’d never be able to leave.

“You just have to pick the time. There’s not a magic number, but I do feel that it is good for any organization, any community to have an orderly turnover of people … I don’t want to stay too long, look like I’m running out of gas, have people starting to get unhappy with me. I don’t believe I’m at that state.”

His announcement sets up Brandon’s first contested mayoral race in eight years.

In 2014, Chrest recorded a significant victory over incumbent Shari Decter Hirst and two other candidates to become mayor, garnering 9,085 votes to Decter Hirst’s 4,249 votes, Mark Kovatch’s 536 votes and John Paul Jacobson’s 120 votes.

Four years ago, Chrest was acclaimed back into the mayor’s chair after no one ran against him in the 2018 municipal election.

With no incumbent, Brandon is guaranteed a change in leadership after voters go to the polls on Oct. 26.

According to Chrest, he chose now to announce his decision because he didn’t want the question of his candidacy to distract from last month’s budget deliberations while giving potential mayoral candidates enough time to seriously assess their desire to run.

“People need to know whether the incumbent is running, that’s going to affect people’s decisions,” he said.

After his announcement, the mayor said he believes it might spur his colleagues on council to announce if they’re running again or for new candidates to emerge.

“I hope we see a slate of people who are genuinely interested, who possibly have some experience in the realm [of governance],” he said. “It’s a bit of a steeper learning curve. It doesn’t work precisely the way you might think it works.”

With only one woman on council, Chrest would like to see a more equal gender balance so the city’s elected representatives will better reflect its population.

“I’m hoping for a diverse slate of candidates for council in general,” he said. “I’d really be hopeful of seeing more female candidates for council in general … We have Jan Chaboyer, who’s our only female voice. That’s not healthy. I guess what troubles me about it is that’s not how I see our community, which is very open and caring and diverse, so it’s a little bit peculiar that we don’t have more female representation on council.”

It’s an approach Chrest has tried to take with encouraging local groups comprised of different cultural backgrounds, sexual and gender identities and toward reconciliation and inclusion with Indigenous groups.

“That’s what makes a great community, everyone has a part to play in it and feels valued and respected.”

For anyone interested in running to replace him, he’s willing to sit down and discuss what the job entails. Since he’s not running again, he hopes that will encourage people who might have been discouraged to call a potential competitor for advice.

Something he wants to get across to any potential replacement is that unlike at the provincial or federal levels, he’s not the boss of councillors the same way a party leader is in charge of their representatives.

The mayor’s vote counts just as much as the rest of the councillors, and it’s their job to keep the conversation moving forward as a debate moderator. While he has occupied that role, Chrest said it has been part of his job to help his fellow council members have the opportunity to shine.

Among his proudest accomplishments during his tenure is fostering council as a respectful workplace. He said he has had people come up to him in public to tell him that more than anything else, they admire how well council gets along even if members don’t always agree.

While it may be exciting to see chaos and conflict among legislators in the United States, for example, the mayor said he believes it’s less fun when it’s happening in your own backyard.

The absence of a party system at the municipal level has allowed Chrest to collaborate efficiently with officials from all party stripes at various levels of government, he said.

He is also proud of how council has limited property tax increases during his tenure, raising them a collective 4.68 per cent over eight years — below the rate of inflation.

“I think it’s one of the better records in our sector,” he said. “We have respect for our taxpayers’ money, and we’ve tried to walk that fine line between continuing to maintain the community the best we can, continuing to invest in it and keep tax increases as low as possible.”

Projects launched or completed during his time in office include a finished $10-million expansion to the city’s airport, the ongoing $125-million project to upgrade the city’s water treatment plant, $30 million in dike repairs along the Assiniboine River and the start of work on a new $11.5-million outdoor sports complex.

The water treatment plant project, which includes funding from all three levels of government and is the biggest infrastructure project in the city’s history, is something Chrest is especially proud of.

But with achievements also come disappointments.

“We have burgeoning issues with respect to mental health, addictions; some of that leads to crime issues,” he said. “The pandemic has not been a friend to that phenomenon. It’s made that even more challenging for people who are experiencing poverty, homelessness, mental health issues, addiction issues.”

“They’re not even necessarily areas that are in the municipal framework, in our jurisdiction. We’re not in the health business, we’re not in the mental health business, we’re not in the addictions business, but it’s important to our community, and I believe it’s important for me to be engaged, advocate for our community, do whatever we can to help make improvements.”

He hopes efforts like the establishment of a Community Wellness Collaborative and a downtown safety and wellness task force, as well as the appointment of a community housing and wellness co-ordinator, will help to address those issues.

During his term, two major downtown projects — a proposed redevelopment of the dormant McKenzie Seeds building and a downtown development led by Brandon University — both fell through before crossing the finish line.

Chrest said he believes the city did all it could to push those projects along and the collapse wasn’t its fault, but he wonders what the benefit to downtown Brandon could have been if even just one of them had gone through.

In the past, mayors like Rick Borotsik, A.C. Fraser, Stephen Clement, George Dinsdale and Leslie McDorman ran for federal or provincial office after completing terms as mayor.

Chrest doesn’t have any current desire to run for office at another level, but anything is possible.

“I learned the hard way over many years to never say never, but I would say at this point, I have no interest or aspiration of any additional position in politics.”

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark