What are Scott’s Priorities?

I was a City Councillor from 2018 to 2022:

• I honoured 100% of his election promises to reduce heights, ensure we have clean drinking water, and focus on helping residents and local businesses, not developers with deep pockets!
• Reduced maximum building heights from 24 down to 12 stories with my motion that updated the Official Community Plan in 2021.
• I support local businesses! After the 2018 election, I worked with staff to get the West beach parking lot near Primos restaurant re-opened for the public. The previous Council had stood by idly while it had been closed for over 2 years and impacting local restaurants. It took me just a few days to work with staff to get the parking lot reopened. Closed parking lots hurts local businesses and hurts tourism! We can do better!
• Urged council and staff to speed up service delivery for simple renovations and single family home permits and businesses permits. Due to excessive red tape, it can take years in White Rock to get a permit. The same permit in other cities takes weeks.
• Voted to retain existing affordable rental house rather than demolish it for expensive condos.
• Added $4m to reserves that support affordable housing for seniors
• Work with Council and staff to speed up approval processes who restaurants impacted by Covid in 2020 and 2021
• Moved to reduce taxes since millions of tax dollars since in 2018 we had $35M in reserves and we now have over $240M sitting in reserves not being spent. In 2024, of the approximately $80M collected in taxes, $29M was never spent and were put in the bank as unneeded reserve funds. That’s about a third of your taxes gathering dust every year! We need fiscal responsibility!
• Moved to measure taxpayer satisfaction with city services as a way to improve city services to be faster and more efficient. You cannot fix what you do not measure! The Mayor and Council did not support my motion. This needs to change! Taxpayers deserve value for money!
• First to reach out to local restaurants during Covid and ask them what they needed from Council.
• Moved to make it easier for residents, visitors, and restaurant staff to have easier car-free access to the beach by bringing back free shuttle services from uptown to the beach.

If re-elected, Scott’s Priorities will be:

• Continue as your voice for residents and local businesses. It’s your City By The Sea, you should have your say!
• Speed up approval process for renovations, single family home construction, and new businesses! It should NOT take years to get a simple approval that takes weeks in other cities.
• Slow down excess development. Snub-the-Hub! Stick to the OCP. Ensure the HUB does not impact our local theatre on Johnston. Excess develop has made traffic and parking difficult for so many!
• Fiscal responsibility. Reduce red tape, consulting costs, and lower taxes!
• Improve city services and infrastructure. Ensure taxpayers get value for their money!
• Encourage active living by improving access to fitness centers, pools, pickleball, beach shuttles
• Ensure public input on major projects is heard 
• Protect the environment and trees,
• Continue to work on Safe drinking water. The arsenic levels are no longer an issue but we need to address Manganese levels still present in the pipes.

Who am I?
I am a proud member of the White Rock community who wants to work with City Council to make our City By the Sea even better!

• City Councillor from 2018-2022
• a Software Engineering Project Manager with 40 years high tech experience
• Active member of the Board of Directors for the White Rock Players’ Club
• Someone who knows how to work with people to accomplish great things
• Husband, Father, Labradoodle Owner, and a good guy
• UBC Grad in Computer Science with Electrical Engineering electives, PhD Candidate at SFU in Computing Science
• Graduate of Algonquin College Wine Appreciation, Wine and Food Pairings, and Sommelier Program
• Graduate of Rosewood Studios Fine Wood Working and Cabinet Making courses
• Studied theatre, singing, cooking, wine, art, woodworking and cabinet making
• Chess Player (Candidate-Master level), Cribbage Player, Euchre Player
• Runner – 6 marathons, Scuba Diver, Sky Diver (Broke both feet!), Golfer, Skier
• Lover of the Arts, acting, singing, Christmas pantomimes, and painting.
• I have been on stage at the White Rock Playhouse and volunteered at five different theatre companies both on and off stage

City Hall needs to listen to the concerns of residents rather than focus on the needs of developers and their short term interests in profit. The Official Community Plan (the OCP) is not just a guideline to be ignored, it is required that good government stick to the OCP and change it only when supported by the community.

Let’s ensure growth is done sustainably to maintain our city’s unique ambiance while providing excellent shops and services and Art Galleries and Theatres to draw in all the people from surrounding communities as customers and friends, without the need to over expand White Rock’s resident population.

More about me: 

I have been in White Rock since 2010 because I believed that this White Rock would be a great small town community to raise my  family.  Since 2012, I have helped various community organizations by donating my time and energy to help community groups get the word out by creating websites, Facebook pages, and twitter accounts for them. As I learned more about the issues, I created my own community pages to help educate the public, and learn from them by reading their comments and answering their questions.

I was a member of Council from 2018 to 2022. I have reminded Council that their Fiduciary Duty is to act for the benefit of residents and local businesses, not out of town developers and certainly not themselves. I have raised concerns about approving new towers without sufficient infrastructure or public support. I have raised questions about water quality and how increased development is making housing less affordable and pushing long time residents out of their own city. I made a motion to measure voter satisfaction with city services as way to improve those services for residents, small businesses, and city employees. You cannot fix what you do not measure. Improved city service quality and response time would be a win-win for votes and staff.

I love White Rock, but it has changed far too much over the last years. This change has not been positive, and it is driven entirely by greed in my opinion. I worry that excess development is destroying our city, that need for better infrastructure is being ignored, that our water is should be made cleaner and safer.

Something in White Rock stinks, and it is not just the water! By voting smart, we can elect a council that listens to residents, local businesses, and responsible developers to create a positive long term vision for White Rock that works for everyone, not just a few. With the right vision, White Rock has all the natural beauty to become BC’s next Carmel, Cannon Beach, and Steveston all rolled into one. Can we fix this? Together, YES WE CAN!

Here are some of the websites that I have created and support within our community.

NoMoreHighRisesInWhiteRock on Facebook since 2012

• Providing the community updates on what our Mayor and City Council are doing, both the good and the bad, and calling out their lies when they do. This site is concerned with the excess development that is destroying our community, and driving out local businesses, and about the lack of clean safe drinking water in White Rock, and that we do not have enough water to fight a large fire.

White Rock Safe Water Alliance on Facebook and website since 2015

• Providing the community with specific information about water quality issues in White Rock, and the health impacts of our water’s excessive levels of arsenic, manganese, lead, and gyphosate, much of which comes directly from our wells that draw from the Sunnyside Aquifer that is being contaminated by run-off from local blueberry farms (pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers) and natural occurring heavy metals. Fraser Health recommended in 2013 that White Rock stop using its wells, and connect up to Safe and Clean Metro Vancouver water. Mayor and Council instead decided to keep using our well water because it was a “cash cow”. Since then, water rates have doubled, and they have spent over $25M on water treatment that has yet to improve our water. Meanwhile there are six valves along North Bluff that connect us to Metro Vancouver water. We could have safe and clean drinking water today simply by turning on those six valves. Vote for Scott, and I will make that happen because providing safe and clean drinking water is a city’s job #1.

NoCasinoSurrey website and No Casino in South Surrey on Facebook since 2011

• When I learned from Terry McNiece that there was a large Casino being planned for South Surrey, I volunteered to help the group NoCasinoSurrey by becoming their official Geek-in-Charge of all their social media including the website, facebook page, and twitter accounts. I volunteering over 300 hours of my time, to run their social media campaign. Being a University PhD student at the time, I lent my research skills to the group, and combined with three other brilliant members of the group, we created a 47 page report to council on the effects of gambling on society, on personal health, and on the local economy. We presented our findings to Surrey Mayor Diane Watts in 2013, and to our delight we successfully convinced Council to reject the proposed casino.

Thanks for visiting,
Scott Kristjanson