Mayoral race now has two faces

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This article was published 21/09/2022 (1248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the first time since 2014, Brandon residents will be treated to a contested mayoral race.

On Tuesday, Elliott Oleson joined Coun. Jeff Fawcett (Assiniboine), who announced his intention to run for head of council in April, in the city’s mayoral race.

In 2014, Rick Chrest defeated incumbent Shari Decter Hirst to earn his first term as Brandon’s mayor. He was then acclaimed to the position in 2018. With Chrest retiring from politics as of election day, Brandon is guaranteed a new mayor, whether it’s Oleson or Fawcett.

However, Oleson said he is not expecting to win.

“Realistically, I’m not going to win this election. I don’t have the establishment backing, I don’t have any credentials on paper. I don’t have the backing of the chamber [of commerce] and basically, there’s not much chance I’ll win.”

He also doesn’t plan on putting up election signs or handing out pamphlets between now and election day on Oct. 26, he said.

That doesn’t mean he’d turn down the position if the ballots leaned in his favour, though.

In an interview with the Sun, Oleson was very honest about his background; he’s a middle-aged father of two, unemployed and multiple years removed from an addiction to alcohol.

“The fact is, in university I took what was a burgeoning drinking problem and I turned it into my life’s goal, and I spent the next 25 years oscillating from being a gutter drunk to occasional bouts of semi-functionality,” he said.

However, he said he believes the upcoming election is a chance for him to speak up about the direction Brandon is heading in and the city’s problems as he sees it, as well as to generate a conversation about the future.

“There are a lot of things that need to be addressed in this city, and I believe that they’re being addressed in the wrong fashion,” he said. “I don’t believe I’m alone in this, it’s just that there’s no way for anyone to meaningfully express their dissent.”

Being in the spotlight like this is out of his comfort zone, he said, but he would regret it if he didn’t take the opportunity.

In his view, many of the problems the city is facing is a result of window dressing — trying to address Brandon’s image without meaningfully tackling its issues.

Last month, Oleson wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to the editor published by the Sun that expressed mock-appreciation for the city looking to borrow $30 million to build new wastewater infrastructure upgrades in the southwest.

He explained that during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was inspired by a video of a woman in the United States who went around and collected discarded face masks from the ground in her community, which he replicated in Brandon but with used needles.

During his travels around the city, he said, he took note of crumbling roads, abandoned properties and decaying buildings that aren’t being dealt with.

Then this year, the city decided to borrow $30 million to build infrastructure upgrades to facilitate further growth and development.

According to Oleson, that showed him a few things: if the city can find the money to build lift stations because they’re supposedly necessary, why isn’t money being used for other essential things that don’t get as much attention?

That, he said, is where the issue of image comes in. He said it doesn’t make sense to spend $30 million on those lift stations when only a small percentage of the population will benefit from them, and the financial burden is going to be placed on residents who are still recovering from the effects of the pandemic and inflation on top of that.

Another factor is the almost doubling of water and wastewater utility rates between 2023 and 2026 that the city is proposing to help cover past utility deficits and pay for projects like those lift stations and upgrades to the municipal water treatment plant.

Those rate increases should have been gradual, he said, since the projects were on the city’s radar for years. But he believes city council waited as long as it could in service of maintaining an image that Brandon keeps costs and taxes low.

“We can grow, but rather than hollowing out the middle, let’s fill it,” he said.

“We can grow up; we don’t need to grow out. We want to say we’re a green city and we care about climate change, that sort of thing. How do we show that, how do we evidence it? By expanding the city limits? By making people more dependent on longer drives? That doesn’t seem in-keeping with the idea of being a more eco-friendly city.”

The new pop-up park is another initiative that Oleson wonders about. Last week, the city opened a plot of land on Pacific Avenue with tables, portable washrooms and sitting rocks for people experiencing homelessness to use during the day.

Oleson said he worries that the purpose is to have unhoused people congregate somewhere during the day to enhance the image of downtown Brandon without actually improving the neighbourhood.

When it comes to the abandoned buildings in downtown Brandon, Oleson said the city isn’t doing enough to enforce bylaws to force absentee and careless property owners and landlords to keep their land in good condition.

Oleson suggested that the city should take over those properties and use them to build low-income housing.

“We could be putting all kinds of money into social housing. There’s all kinds of things you could be doing for security and safety downtown, but we’re not willing to do the things that need to be done for it. We want the Band-Aid solution; we want the easy and obvious solution.”

He said part of the issue is that the city, as well as some of its institutions and committees, lack accountability and transparency.

This, he said, was evidenced by the informal city council meetings held in Brandon in recent years. Though the current council has touted its collegiality, Oleson believes that prevents councillors from speaking up and disagreeing with the rest.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

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