In this edited version of their conversation, CITinfoResource editor hanspetermeyer talks to Kelowna City Councilor Michelle Rule about her impressions of GGRC09, and how "Resilient Cities" makes a difference to non-metro BC communities like Kelowna. An audio version of this interview is available here at CITinfoResource.
hanspetermeyer: Michelle, how long have you been on Kelowna's City Councill?
Michelle Rule: This is my second term, so going on four years now.
hpm: What got you involved in local government?
MR: It was an interest in developing the community in a sustainable manner. It's interesting, I've lived here all my life and over the years I've watched the community grow and it's more than doubled in population since I was a teenager. I saw that we were putting a lot of effort into our economy here, but not paying much attention to the environment or social issues. I thought we needed a voice that could speak to that on our council, so I ran.
hpm: You recently attended the Resilient Cities conference, the 6th Gaining Ground summit, in Vancouver. Is that the first Gaining Ground conference you have participated in?
MR: Yes it is.
hpm: What prompted you to get to Resilient Cities?
MR: When I saw the agenda for the list of speakers, I thought, "What a great way to learn about what is really going on in sustainability and resiliency for cities in a short period of time." There was just so much to listen to and so many people to meet, which is what drew me to it.
hpm: So there were obviously some big names on that agenda. Were there some surprises, people that you hadn't expected to get what you thought from?
MR: I thought all the speakers were excellent. I had never heard Sam Adams speak before, the Mayor of Portland and I was really interested in what he had to say at the conference. I think it's very exciting, the work they are doing in Portland. That was one of the surprises for me. I was also very interested in Sarah Severn www.focusthenation.org/about-us/board.../sarah-severn of Nike, who talked about business the "one planet economy." I thought that was an excellent presentation about corporate responsibility.
hpm: A lot of what Resilient Cities is about is cities, and while Kelowna is certainly a city it's a small city. The Communities in Transition program at the Real Estate Foundation focuses on the non-metropolitan parts of BC. How do you see the "big city" topics and speakers at Resilient Cities relating to smaller cities and non-metro area, like Kelowna?
MR: It was focused on the big cities, but in Kelowna we feel like we are a little bit on the verge of being a big city. We have an opportunity to do things right from the beginning, so a lot of the topics at Resilient Cities gave me information on what Vancouver of Portland or big cities have done. It's an opportunity to think about how we better start planning for things like this. For light rapid transit, and other things we don't quite have the population base for yet, but we will, and we need to plan now if we are going to have that in the future.
hpm: It's been 3 weeks since you got back from Resilient Cities. I imagine you have talked to other Counselors, city staff. What kind of response are you getting on these ideas in Kelowna?
MR: People I talk to are very interested in what we learnt from the conference. Especially our staff. I bought back tons of information for them and linked them up with a number of people. I was able to link with all kinds of people from different communities while I was there. I've gone back now and emailed those people and we've started conversations so my Council certainly see the value in sending me to the conference. I think what we are going to see next year is a few more from my Council are going to want to go.
hpm: That's good to hear. Did any of your staff attend?
MR: No, unfortunately none of our staff were able to attend but again I think that based on what I was able to tell them we will possibly see some more interest in the future.
hpm: One of the things that I've noticed that happens at these events, and at Gaining Ground particularly, is what you just said: People connecting, not just with information from the speakers but with each other. Were there other local government, councillors and mayors from BC communities there that you connected with?
MR: Yes certainly there were some elected officials. I connected with a lot of staff from other communities. It's just who I ended up sitting next to. I met the Social Development Manager from Prince George. We made a very strong connection. We both have an interest in youth engagement so we had great conversations.
hpm: If there were 3 things to take away from Resilient Cities that really spoke to you about things that Kelowna is dealing with, what would they be?
MR: One of the things that really jumped out me was Jim Dier's talk on neighborhood power from Seattle. That just totally – his neighborhood planning program, where the plans were made available to the community groups based on how many in the community were interested and then the neighborhood really took ownership of the plans and took responsibility. That was amazing to me. One of the examples he gave from San Francisco, with the parking spots where they put parks on parking spots and people put money in the meters. I just thought, "Wow, what an incredible way to engage the local neighborhood in the planning of their community and then the implenation of that plan." So that was one of the things that I took home where I thought, "We could easily do something like that here."
I have a whole bunch of things starred on my notes, things like listening to Eva Kras from CANSEE [Canadian Society for Ecological Economics] and her talk about trust and co-operation, that really came home to me. Again, everybody has to be working together. We have a regional district here for central Okanagan, and we also have a north and south Okanagan regional district. When she was talking it really spoke to me about the need to pull the three together so even though we don't have any connection in terms of ability to govern or anything like that, as a large group we could be working better. That then broadens our population base. We go from the 160,000 we have in central Okanagan to over 300,000 if we were able to connect the three and work through that process. That really got me thinking about that, and again with an eye to the future and the planning that we need to do now.
hpm: About 6 months ago I interviewed Victor Cumming, who hales from Vernon. He was talking about regional economic development on that basis, and he specifically cited that the three Okanagan districts actually have a lot more in common than they are allowed to have because of their jurisdictional separation, and the strength from working together like that is not something that is tapped into enough.
MR: Exactly. One of the other things that I took home has to do with something we've been having a big discussion about: electric cars and preparing our streets for electric cars and plug-ins where people can recharge their cars. It was interesting that one of the speakers, I think it was Richard Register, and he said even a better car isn't good enough because you are still paving the world. That was one of the real take-home ones for me. I thought, "Wow, we are putting all this focus on hybrid cars and electric cars and then he said that, and I thought he was right because you still have to build more roads". There won't be less cars, they are better for the environment in the sense of GHG emissions but you still have to build roads.
hpm: is the GHG emission thing something that Kelowna City Council is really wrestling with? Does that come up as a big topic for you folks?
MR: It has, because provincially we've been told that we have to be carbon neutral by 2012. Kelowna was one of the first cities to sign on to the Climate Charter. We absolutely agree that we need to do something about climate change and reducing our carbon footprint, but it's a struggle for our community to figure out how to do that. Again, a lot of it is because we are still so automobile focused, just because of the way we have developed over the years. We are having the discussion and looking for solutions.
hpm: My last question for you Michelle, I think it's my last question, is who were your 3 stand out speakers at Resilient Cities?
MR: In one of the workshops I heard Gian-Carlo Sairrenen speak from Calgary and he was amazing. His discussion around the sustainable neighborhood that he's been working with in Calgary, and the way that they pulled all that together. I was really impressed by him. Of course, Mike Harcourt is always entertaining and I know him personally so it was nice to hear him and hear his continued passion for taking care of all our communities, big and small. And not just our communities, but the people who live within them, including the marginalised.
Mark Holland has done work for Kelowna with our Official Community Plan, and I thought his "Resilient Cities Manifesto" was amazing. I'm hoping they did an audio of that, and that it will be available to hear because that is something I would like to play here for my council. So, those three were great. And Nola-Kate Seymoar from Sustainable Cities, she was fantastic. She spoke to the larger group and she also spoke at one of the smaller workshops that I was at. Her intelligence and her breadth of experience is always so impressive. I guess I named 4! And I could go on, because as I said earlier, that the thing that drew me to the conference was the amazing array of speakers and no-one was disappointing. I thought they were all great.
hpm: I do have another question and it has to do with your colleagues across the province. When you go to places like UBCM or your regional local government association, are the kind of topics addressed in Resilient Cities becoming more and more part of the conversation or are they still marginalized?
MR: No, I think it becoming more of the conversation and part of that is from the urging of the province with the carbon neutral goals. We are all faced with similar predicaments in the rural areas where we are so automobile based. So there is a lot of discussion around that and some of it is not so happy because the smaller municipalities feel like they have been told to do this, but not necessarily provided with the tools. We do talk a lot about it at UBC. There were a number of sessions on climate change and reducing GHGs. They were well attended. I think generally we all want to do the right thing. There aren't too many people anymore, at the municipal government level anyway, who don't think there's a problem. We kind of got passed that stage. Now it's just a matter of figuring out what we can do about it. How to message that to our population and get the buy-in from the grassroots level, because that's where it really all needs to start. We need to be leaders, and we have to have the tools to get that message out. Those are a lot of the discussions we are having.
hpm: If you had one thing you wanted to see at the next Gaining Ground summit in light of what you have just said, what would it be? Do you have any thoughts on that?
MR: Yes, I think depending on your audience, if you are hoping to attract more elected officials to the conference, then a session on how to get that message out in a positive way to our citizens. That would probably be really helpful. And maybe a common social marketing plan that we could work on together. Maybe have a workshop at the conference where we could sit down and plan together and then that way the citizens would be hearing the same kinds of messages, whether they live in Kelowna or Cache Creek or Smithers. I think that would be a really helpful session.
hpm: Thank you very much for that Michelle.
MR: Thank you Hans.
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