There was a time when Surrey was the butt of jokes. No more.
As we read in Part I of our exit interview yesterday, the city is growing by leaps and bounds. New town centres, new towers, new parks, and of course, new bike lanes.
More tellingly, the next mayor will have at least as much influence over the implementation of the Metro Vancouver Regional Growth Strategy as any other mayor. ‘Cause Surrey is where it’s all going to happen —people, homes, transit and jobs. The big question though — in what order?
In our conclusion, Hepner addresses the role of the Province in accommodating that growth, why she feels women sometimes avoid politics, and what candidates should stay away from. (If you’ve been reading this Mayoral Exit Interview series, you may not need three guesses for that one). Plus, her immediate priorities upon leaving office.
How has the city changed in the time that you’ve been in office?
We’ve grown by about a hundred and some thousand people. Not since I’ve been mayor — that’s about forty thousand, but since I’ve been in public office we’ve grown well over a hundred thousand.
I’ve always been a believer that growth is the key to economic success. You could see in 2008 when growth had stalled and nothing’s happening, that’s when the economics become scary. When we inherited a decade of no tax increase it was very difficult to keep up with the kind of infrastructure that growth does demand, and I think that’s a struggle that we’re still seeing even today. I’ll give you an example. Over the ten years that we had zero — I’m not talking about even a cost of living increase, I’m talking about zero tax increase for a decade — if we had just done cost of living and cost of living alone, we would have in our budget another almost fifty million dollars every year. Well, fifty million dollars will build you a pool. It will build you a rec centre. It will build you an ice rink, or close to it. So struggling with a catch-up, because we are the lowest taxed in the region, and we’re often proud of that. But it’s a two-edged sword — it’s very difficult to keep up infrastructure to embrace that growth. That’s a tough balance.
Let’s really take a hard look at the school situation, because that’s a big one in Surrey. Not as big as it was in the ’90s when we had more than 400 portables. But we’re approaching that very quickly — we now have 333 portables. So we’re looking very much like we did at a time when we had to re-assess how quickly we could grow.
And here’s the crux of that in my mind — we create, as a region, the Regional Growth Strategy. It is a document that is required by legislation provincially. And it takes us a very long time to do it, sometimes five to ten years, but we have to do it. So we produced a regional growth strategy that assumes most of the growth of the million people that we expect to see over the next decade and a half will come south of the Fraser — 800,000 of them. We give that to the Province. In my mind, the reason we give that to the Province is so that they can then, not only thoroughly read it, but determine, based on having read it, these are the places that will need the provincial infrastructure to keep up. ie. schools. ie. hospitals.
And I would throw in transportation as well, wherever it becomes the provincial responsibility, and since TransLink is their baby, transportation certainly fits in there. Otherwise, why the hell did we bother doing it? We’ve spun our wheels! This is the first time that I’ve had this discussion with the Premier. They actually get it. But I’m not sure that when they say, “What are our work plans?” that they assess it based on, “Well, the Regional Growth Strategy says this, let’s prepare and do this.” I don’t know. That’s now just me spouting off. That comes from 33 years of sitting here.
What advice would you give an aspiring elected official, perhaps one lacking in any kind of prior experience?
Honestly, I would have to say, “Stick to your guns. Be true to your own principles. Don’t get easily pushed and pulled,” because there will be lots of pushing and pulling going on.
And I would say, “Take care of yourself,” and then I would say, “Stay off of social media. Stay the hell away from it.” I can’t do it. I just find that it creates a mental vortex that is just not good. It’s not good because it brings out the negative, and I have been accused of being a Pollyanna because I truly believe in order to have good governance, you had better be on the positive side of things.
What would you like citizens to understand about governing before you leave?
I’m not sure that too many people today understand that governing is really all about service, and when you’re talking about service, you’re talking about people who are already passionate about their community. So you don’t have to beat them up, they’re already there. They think about and love your community as much as you do.
I just think we’ve lost the ability to have civil discourse. I know you hear it all of the time, but I think it is the greatest danger to democracy that we have today. I think it dissuades those who want to serve, and I think that it dissuades women who are generally, by nature, collaborative.
With a brand new federal government, and with a brand new provincial government, I’ve been able to establish the relationships I need to do the best for my city. Because that’s your job. And that ability to create partnerships and collaboration is fundamentally the most important thing you need to do. Otherwise you can’t achieve anything.
What’s next?
Leisure, hopefully. I have no intention of doing anything initially. I have a great passion for a couple of agencies here in the city that I may choose to help out down the road, but right now my intention will be focused on my family, my home life and my grandchildren.
I’m 70, I’m not going back into public office. I would sit on a board, I would help out some of our agencies, I would do a little bit of mentoring if need be, but I will not run for public office again. I’ve done my time. I spent most of my life at Surrey — 33 years of it. I’ve been honoured to be there, but it’s time to move on.
