Following a petition asking John Roston to run for city council in October’s election, the Richmond resident has decided to take up the challenge.
Last spring, the online petition asking him to run called Roston a “creative-thinking community actionist.” Now the petition has over 200 signatures.
“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.
While in the past it’s been suggested that he run for council, Roston said he was surprised by the support he got 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,” Roston said.
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.
Now, Roston says he hopes these topics become election issues, and has many suggestions for changes Richmond can make.
“My style is don’t complain unless you have something better to suggest,” he said.
Roston said part of the reason he wanted to run independently was because he felt some slates didn’t have clear suggestions for how to fix the problems they were bringing up.
“I’m not really comfortable with a lot of this, sort of, saying how terrible things are…and just saying ‘we’re going to do something about it’ without saying what,” he said.
Roston currently highlights many of his ideas on his blog www.johnroston.ca, which he says will be used to create a more concrete election platform in the coming weeks.
Roston says he expects his election campaign will be a challenge, as he anticipates he will have limited funding. But at a dinner with some of his supporters last Friday, Roston said he was encouraged to give it a shot regardless.
“The more we talked about how difficult it was, the more people said ‘oh forget it, just run,’” he said.
Richmond’s municipal election is scheduled for Oct. 20.
