It’s been two years since he’s been elected, but MLA Henry Yao is finally signing a lease for a constituency office.
After three failed attempts to secure an office space in his riding of Richmond South Centre, Yao has been pushing for the legislative financial services to lighten up on their requirements in order to help MLAS open offices.
This has yielded results and Yao’s new office is planned for the Keltic building on No. 3 Road, close to the Brighouse Canada Line Station, and he hopes, once the lease is signed, renovations will happen fast.
Yao said financial services’ requirements were “dinosaur-like,” with the requirements making the process cumbersome and hard to secure a lease.
“Everyone realizes we need to modernize,” Yao said on Thursday, sitting at Waves Café where he holds a lot of meetings with constituents.
For example, when leasing a building, the landlord was being asked to pay for all the renovations upfront and then be reimbursed after the fact.
This caused many landlords to balk, Yao said, and they wouldn’t even entertain negotiations for a lease.
Furthermore, the province didn’t want to pay a security deposit, something that many potential landlords disagreed with.
The process was also very bureaucratic with many legislative departments working on the issue, Yao said.
To expedite the process, he was finally been able to get the landlord’s lawyer to speak directly to the legislative lawyer.
So, after three lease negotiations fell through – one of which went on about nine months – Yao’s team was able to secure the Keltic Place office space and he was on his way Thursday afternoon to finally sign the lease.
Yao credits pressure from the Speaker of the House to ease the requirements and his constituency assistant’s tenacity in helping to find the right location.
While an MLA’s office, in fact, an extension of the legislature, Yao said he hopes his constituency office becomes a “community hub.”
