Paul Brown Announces His Run for Mayor of Victoria

I dropped by the Marriott downtown today to see Paul Brown's announcement of his run for mayor of the City of Victoria.   It was crowd of a bit more than 30 people that came out to hear his announcement.   A number of past candidates for council were there - Susan Woods, Steve Filipovic and Simon Nattrass (though he was late!) were the ones I can not remember at the moment.


Paul Brown has learned a lot about running for office since last fall when he made a run in the City by-election.   He has a campaign manager, he has a team of people helping, he has well laid out materials and he is starting the run for office early enough to have a decent chance of winning.

The focus of his campaign is about the lack of clear leadership from City Council in this last term.   The council has been seemingly drifting from one potential priority to another and seemingly are lacking the bigger picture vision.  The lack of leadership from the council is truly the core of the reason why there were problems with the blue bridge replacement.   Yes, council made a decision quickly and decisive decision making is one part of leadership.  Council fell down in not bringing along the people and letting the public have their say before making their decision.   The decision felt imposed.

The whole decision on the bridge just highlights the sense of an unaccountable and unresponsive city government.   It is not only on this one issue, but it is on many issues that the council feels like they are in almost a siege mentality and that any comment about what the City is doing is an attack on the Council and city staff.   Paul Brown wants to change this should be be elected mayor.

Paul also highlighted the dangerous fiscal situation the City is moving towards because of the needs of all the aging infrastructure.   I have been meaning to write something about this but it is a big issue and I have not had the time to look through everything needed to get any idea of what is involved.   Paul Brown has been doing that work and has seen how deep the pit is going, the potential problem is scary.

I general, I have to say I am very impressed with Paul Brown and see nothing that would dissuade me from supporting him for mayor.