The person representing the Regional District of Nanaimo’s Electoral Area A hopes for another four years to finish some of the work he’s started.
Keith Wilson, area director for South Wellington-Cassidy-Cedar, seeks another term at the RDN board table to see the South Wellington community centre project to completion and address housing issues.
Housing has been something Wilson said he has been looking into for the past five months.
“I think there are some solutions to it on a regional scale that I would like to get back to the table and discuss … I think mostly it’s in the planning side and we can advocate for smaller lot sizes, we can advocate for a return to duplex, triplex, quadplex kind of development. Also additional dwelling units on properties; I think that that’s a big step towards getting things done,” said Wilson.
South Wellington Elementary School closed in 2013 and the RDN and School District 68 reached an agreement to convert it to a rec centre in 2021, with hazardous material removal and building upgrades part of that work. Wilson was involved in the negotiations and said it’s an accomplishment he is proud of and something he wants to see through.
“The biggest challenge was the school board had not made a decision on what they were going to do with the building, so they were reticent to move forward until they had a clearer understanding,” Wilson said. “That meant pushing a little on the school trustees to make a decision about whether the school was surplus or not and then talking to senior levels of school board staff, to try and convince them that this was a project … worth considering and then just doing all the footwork to get it done.”
Wilson said it can be hard to communicate with constituents in Area A. Many rely on social media, which can cause problems, he said.
“There are challenges in terms of having the message that you want to send out be the message that’s received,” he said. “That’s common on social media that people misunderstand what they’re reading or what was meant to be said, so that’s a challenge. The other is when I have had events in the community to talk about things, the turnout is so small that people really don’t get the information that they should get anyway.”
ELECTION 2022: Candidates in Nanaimo, Lantzville, RDN and SD68
reporter@nanaimobulletin.com
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