Welcome to Your Kamloops!

Quick Campaign Update...

Have put together a bank account of about $6000 so far, spending $3600 in various forms of advertising in the media, and about $1000 in outreach up at TRU, to try to work with students and help them make an informed vote. Rest will be spent on signs, campaign "hockey cards" and other printed material. Will keep a small contingency fund as well.

Voting against the Curling Club grant....reasons why.

Yesterday, at council, the president of one of the curling clubs (I think the North Shore club) came to the meeting and asked us for $6000 to help save this year's edition of a youth curling bonspeil. They were caught quite badly when the one person they had organizing the tourney quit.

I have a huge respect for the work volunteers do in keeping our kids in sports.

But, I could not support a straight grant because we had no advance information detailing the situation, and I was really scared of creating a precedent (go before council in the weeks before an election, and the purse strings are a little more open).

The majority of my colleagues had a different view. Tina Lange and I had favoured the loan approach, and the rest of Council supported the grant approach if the curling club needed it.

Campaign Video Diary - Oct 25th 2008

Nurturing a Spirit of Entrepreneurship at City Hall - on the Jim Harrison show tomorrow!

One of my highlighted issues in this election is nurturing a spirit of entrepreneurship at city hall. We have all heard the stories (true or not) of city workers standing around doing very little, etc.

From my experience, our city workers actually work very hard and take great pride in what they do. But, in the public sector, there is a great responsibility to keep getting better.

In the past 3 years, I have had numerous discussions with my colleagues about efficiency and accountability of the spending we direct on behalf of the community. The new Tournament Capital Centre is a great example of what city staff have accomplished - this new building has created a surplus of about $175 000 in less than a year. The Development Services department publishes annual efficiency reports, assessing how they are doing in meeting their benchmarks. All very good stuff.

We need to build on this. I am appearing on the Jim Harrison show tomorrow, at 9:10 am, and I will be talking about possible ideas as to how.

Clip from my End Homeless is Good For Everyone Press Conference...

How to End Homelessness - Create Economic Activity, Reduce Crime, and Save Taxes at the Same Time.

Ending homelessness in Kamloops makes sense for so many different reasons - morally, fiscally, and in terms of crime and community safety. Whether someone voted conservative, liberal, ndp, or green in the federal election - we will all find significant common ground in ending homelessness.

Ending homelessness is not a left wing issue. It is not a right wing issue. It is a community issue, and we all can benefit. So many of us feel that having people in our community without a home is morally just not right. And added to that:

Businesses benefit when people are not eating, sleeping, and defecating in this alley. Victims of crime benefit as less people get caught up in breaking the law on a habitual or occasional basis.

Significantly, and I have had this number confirmed by BC's Minister of Housing and Social Development, providing services to people living on the street costs taxpayers (round numbers) $55000. Housing the same person, and supporting them in housing costs (round numbers) $37000.

Ending Homelessness in fiscally responsible.

So again, there are many good reasons to end homelessness. To right a moral wrong. To help businesses grow. To reduce crime. And, in fact, to be more efficient and accountable with our tax dollars.

So how exactly do we end homelessness in Kamloops?

Let me say, first of all, we have great social agencies  working to house people and support them in housing. We have great and growing community involvement from faith based organizations, the business community, and from concerned citizens from all walks of life. What I will propose today, I have learnt from all these great people.

1. We need to adopt a "housing first" approach. This approach emphasizes providing people housing before helping them beat an addiction issue or helping address mental health issues.
   
   
2. We need to stop doing homeless counts, and start doing needs assessments for homeless people. And then we have to find resources for social service professionals to find housing and provide supports that meet their needs.
   
   
3. We need a coordinated effort. And I believe city hall needs to coordinate and facilitate this effort. We need to state that one of our official community goals is to end homelessness in Kamloops. We should consider a council committee whose goal it would be to coordinate community action to end homelessness.
   
   
4. We need to monitor our progress carefully and publicly report on our progress. We need to make sure everything we do is moving towards zero homelessness in Kamloops.
   
   
5. We need to continue to work closely with our primary funding partners, the provincial and federal governments, so that they understand our needs and requirements to achieve our goal.  We should find out how much city bylaw officers, fire department and RCMP spend on issues involving homeless people.

Many communities across North America are adopting these approaches and are starting to have great success.

Lastly, let me say how proud I am to have been of part of our current city council that has, I think, worked very hard to assist the creation of supportive housing in Kamloops. I would like the next council to build on this success.

My 2008 Election Messages to the City of Kamloops...

As a city council member, I have had the great opportunity to work on many, many different issues and to express my views. If re-elected, I will continue to do that. For this coming election, however, I have chosen to highlight 5 issues I believe are critical, and concern the entire community. I also want to talk humbly about the things I think I have done well the past three years, and honestly about the things I think I need to improve. Your thoughts are most welcome:

Civic Election Campaign 2008
Arjun Singh

Mission Statement

We live in a time of extraordinary challenge and amazing opportunity. It will take people from all walks of life, very diverse people who have not traditionally worked closely together, to turn these upcoming challenges into opportunities. We need to build consensus on how to move forward from the bottom up and not from the top down. We need to all work together to make a difference. We need to be bold but not divisive.

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Highlighting these issues: 

These are other important issues in Kamloops, but I consider these  to be among the most critical. I like that they are bold, but achievable. Moreover. better addressing these issues will offer benefits to the whole community:

• Tapping the Wisdom of Kamloopsians (concern: the best decisions, creating community)
• Ending Homelessness (concern: moral issue, save money, community safety)
• Nurturing the Culture of Entrepreneurship at City Hall (concern: keeping taxes down, innovation, affordability)
• Winning the War against Climate Change (concern: survival of human species, green clean economic development)
• Advocating for a child and youth friendly city (concern: helping young people get the best start on life possible)

Personal Statement

Things I think have done well:

• been approachable
• been open , some might say bold, about my thoughts and opinions
• represents points of views that are sometimes not represented
• worked hard to learn about different issues

Things I need to improve

•      listen better: I now try to be much more conscious of really listening to others, and to not dominate or talk too much.
•      speak more clearly and succinctly: I am trying to annunciate my words better, express myself with less words
•     thinking, researching before speaking: need to make sure I am thinking complete thoughts and that I can provide understandable,  respectable reasons why I think these thoughts.
• buidling consensus: I think its important not to polarize people when you express opinions, but to try to invite conversation towards coming to consensus on the best way forward.

My Civic Election Team, Fundraising Update...

I have been blessed to have a wide range of amazing people agree to help me with a really engaging, issue oriented civic election campaign. I have a group of people who meet in person (have met 4 times so far) and I have a larger group of advisors who are going to start communicating through email. So far, face to face, we have talked about which issues to highlight, about an outreach and advertising strategy, about preparing for the various forums, and about fundraising.

So far, we have raised about $3000 for the campaign, and we are aiming to reach $5000 by the end of next week.

List of Candidates in the 2008 Kamloops Civic Election

If people have not heard or seen it yet, city hall has posted the complete list of candidates for Mayor and Council positions this year.

Council Meeting Recaps - updating postponed for now...

From my blog statistics, I know my council meeting recaps are useful for many people. Its been a constant struggle to keep these current, and I have fallen behind again. Here is what I am going to do: after the November 15th election, win or lose, I will update all the recaps so that they will be a current resource. Hope that works for folks!