Richmond’s municipal election is just over six months away and one group of residents is circulating a petition to get John Roston to run for council.
Roston, who moved to Steveston in 2007, has been a community advocate on issues including rental housing, farmland preservation, the ONNI development on Steveston’s waterfront and intercultural issues. He began speaking on these issues at city council and meetings in 2008. Currently, the petition to get Roston to run for council has 93 signatures.
“John Roston is a creative-thinking community actionist in Richmond, BC. We need John to run for council this fall because he has action-oriented solutions to issues that face everyone living in Richmond,” the petition says.
“This petition is asking John to consider running for council, where Richmond desperately needs creative thinkers who will take action on critical issues in our city that effect livability and sustainability.”
While in the past it’s been suggested that he run for council, Roston was surprised by the support he’s already gathered from a variety of groups.
“I liked the idea that a disparate group of citizens sort of spontaneously decided to turn the election process on its head and encourage someone to run instead of accepting the candidates who put themselves forward,” he said.
“I thought…a few of my friends will sign and that will be the end of that.”
But more than 70 people signed the petition on the first day.
“I don’t know 70 people. So some of these have to be people who like my ideas and that sort of gives me pause and makes me think I should be taking this more seriously,” Roston said.
“They’ve even co-opted my wife and she’s very keen on it.”
Regardless of whether or not he runs, Roston said there are some changes he thinks need to be made within council. In particular, Roston suggested council could work more collaboratively, make difficult decisions that might make them unpopular with some segments of the population and could be “more of a leader than a follower.”
“We have what’s happening now, major issues drag on and they get worse,” Roston said. “They have to be willing to take bold steps and try new things that have never been done before.”
For Roston, making these changes to council would be key to his campaign.
“If I were to run it’s going to be a lot more on how we should change the way council works on a day-to-day basis, rather than on a particular issue,” he said.
However, there is one issue Roston would like to see more attention on: intercultural collaboration and communication.
“This is the other very large issue that Richmond has to take out of the closet and say we really have to confront this publicly, get some real input,” he said.
All that said, the real question is, will Roston run?
“I’m going to wait and see how many people sign…I’ll probably take a couple of months to decide,” he said.
“If enough people sign, I probably will, yeah.”
