From the Kaslo elections conversations. Not from any candidate, and not against any candidate.
What would you change about how this village makes decisions?
This summer, a group of us from Kaslo's major non-profits decided to do something simple: talk to as many people in this village as we could. Not a survey, not a form, just conversations, at a potluck, at the farmers market, at the door, wherever people would give us ten minutes. We asked that one question, over and over. By the time we're done, we'll have talked to hundreds of you.
Let's fix how Kaslo makes decisions
What we're hearing, and a simple plan to act on it.
New, October 2
The candidates have answered.
Every candidate for mayor and council was asked the same two questions about the seven fixes: which would you start with, and which do you disagree with? Ten of eleven responded. Every answer, side by side, in ballot order, unedited.
And the answers are already improving the plan. Four candidates, including both running for mayor, said fix 3 ("share the load at the top") doesn't work as written, and they're right. Provincial law decides who the mayor is and who holds the regional seat, so those can't be rotated. What can be shared is the rest: who chairs committees, who helps set the agenda, and who gets mentored to take on more. After the election, fix 3 will be rewritten to say exactly that. This is what the plan was meant to do: get better every time someone pushes back.
As featured on the front page of the Valley Voice, September 24.
The problem, in one paragraph
Right now, five people volunteer to run our village, for very little pay, on top of their regular jobs and families. The way the job is set up makes it harder than it needs to be: they don't get much training, they don't get much support, and they only hear from us once every four years when we vote or randomly in the street. That's not their fault. It's not anyone's fault. It's just an old system that was built for a slower world, and it's time to fix it.
This isn't about blaming anyone who has served. It's about making the job work better, for them and for us.
A plan: seven simple fixes
Every one of them comes down to the same idea: plan together, decide clearly, move faster.
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Give new councillors and the community a map, not a maze.
Right now people learn the rules of the government as a reaction, and the community only learns them when they're told at a meeting whether they can speak or not. Let's write a simple guide, have the community check it, improve on it regularly, measure and make sure everyone understands it. Nobody should have to guess.
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Bring back real conversations before the vote.
Decisions used to get talked through with the community first. Let's work with local engagement experts to bring that back, and build committees around the most critical community priorities, so nobody is surprised by a decision they never got to weigh in on.
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Share the load at the top.
One person chairs every meeting, shapes every agenda, and holds every government seat, for years. Rotate it: councillors take turns chairing, sit in on agendas each quarter, share the regional seats. More people learn, nobody burns out, and the village never depends on one person. Switzerland runs a whole country this way. It works.
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Make reporting work for the people.
Village staff already report to council at every meeting. The problem is nobody hears it, and even councillors struggle to make sense of it. So the fix isn't more reporting, it's better reach: a monthly community table, no matter who is on council, that brings what staff already reported to the village in plain language, with a few simple numbers we track together. Council comes as a partner, staff are welcome but never required, and nobody at Village Hall gets extra work.
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Plan ahead instead of just reacting.
Too many decisions get made in a rush, without looking at the full picture first. Let's take the time to think things through before we build, spend, or say no. There are great local organizations, people and tools ready to help build that capacity today. The government should not work in a silo!
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Clean up how we communicate.
You can walk into Village Hall, phone, or email, and someone will listen. But then what? Your concern might get one reply, or it might surface weeks later at a council meeting that almost nobody attends. Nothing is tracked, nothing is public, and nobody knows what happened to it. Every question and concern should go into one open system, get a number, get an answer, and show up in a public report, no names, just what's been asked and what got done. The government is all our business. Let's run it like one.
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Support the people already doing the work.
Groups like Community Services, the Housing Society, and the Chamber of Commerce are already doing the heavy lifting on housing, food, energy, and getting around town. Let's give them real support by having them weigh in through committees on community priorities, so the government and the community finally line up.
What can help us do this
Kaslo InfoNet built our own fibre network when nobody else would. In the same spirit, local groups have spent the past few years building simple tools, made right here in Kaslo and owned by the community, so people can share what they think matters most, any day of the year, not just on election day. It's not fancy. It's not magic. It's just software, the same kind of thing your phone or your bank already uses, except this one belongs to us, and the information stays here.
What we're asking
From residents
Vote this October. Then do three small things, each under twenty minutes: tell us what matters to you, host one kitchen table with a few neighbours and send in what you heard, and bring one person who disagrees with you to a conversation. A village that governs itself has to show up more than once every four years. That's the deal.
From our non-profits and community leaders
Kaslo runs on you: the societies, clubs, businesses, and volunteers doing the real work. But most of us work in our own corners, chasing the same grants and the same few volunteers, rarely in the same room. So rally this fall. Sit down together, debate how we actually collaborate, say what each of us needs, and back each other. The village can't support what it can't see, and we can't support each other if we never meet.
From every candidate
We asked all eleven which of these seven they'd start with, and which they disagree with. Same question, same deadline, no spin, no editing, no favourites. The answers are published here, side by side in ballot order, before the first ballots are cast.
From whoever gets elected
Argue with this list, change it if we got something wrong, and pick a few to actually start. We don't expect everything to be fixed overnight. We just want to see real progress within the year, and we'll check the numbers together to see how it went.
Our promise back to you
We will never say this is "fixed for good." No village is ever finished. We just want it visibly, honestly better, one step at a time, together. Plan together. Decide clearly. Move faster.
After October 17
The election is one day. Everything on this page is about the other 1,460. So once the votes are counted, the conversation moves to two places that don't close: the monthly community table, where we sit down together and check the numbers, and a simple online tool where you can say what matters to you any day of the year, see what your neighbours are prioritizing, and find every upcoming gathering on one calendar.
We'll share where to find it after the election. Until then, find us in person. Either way, don't wait four years.
