'A good first start': NPA and Green councillors praise Kennedy Stewart for proposed appointments

The only two returning councillors to Vancouver City Hall are giving incoming mayor Kennedy Stewart high marks for the process he used to recommend people for various boards and committees. 

"It's a good first start. There's a time for politics, and a time to make sure we do the best job we can do for the residents of Vancouver and for the city," said Non-Partisan Association (NPA) councillor Melissa De Genova.

"I think we need to try our very best to put partisanship aside."

After a campaign where the NPA and Stewart clashed regularly, the new mayor has recommended De Genova be chair of the standing committee on City Finance and Services, and she and two other NPA councillors, Colleen Hardwick and Lisa Dominato, be appointed to the Metro Vancouver board.

In addition, Hardwick looks set to be the sole council appointee to the Vancouver Heritage Commission and Heritage Foundation Board, and Dominato the chair of the PNE Board. 

The appointments need to be ratified at the new council's first meeting, which takes place Monday night after councillors are sworn in, but De Genova is looking forward to her new, likely expanded role, after four years of being perennially opposed by the Vision Vancouver majority on council.  

"It's not the mayor with five or more soldiers that's going to have the decisions made in the back room. The mayor signaled he's interested in meetings with the different councillors on a regular basis," she said. 

Met with all councillors

Incumbent Green Party councillor Adriane Carr looks set to be appointed chair of the city's other standing committee, Policy and Strategic Priorities. Carr also praised Stewart. 

"The mayor-elect was very consultative. We consulted across party lines, lots of meetings, conversations between all the councillors as far as I know, in the aim to get a set of recommendations that everyone could be supportive of," she said. 

"There might be a few tweaks, but generally speaking I think he's done a good job with this process."

Carr looks to be joined on the Metro Vancouver board by Green Party councillor-elect Michael Wiebe, with fellow Green Pete Fry appointed to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities executive. 

Carr also said she would be putting forward a motion to have Vancouver move forward with a city-wide housing plan in an upcoming meeting. 

Smaller role for Swanson

Stewart will oversee Vancouver's first council in over 30 years where no party has a majority of seats, and the proposed placements are a departure from those under Gregor Robertson, who gave virtually all key appointments to fellow Vision Vancouver councillors. 

The only councillor not appointed to a regional board or named as a rotating deputy mayor was Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) councillor-elect Jean Swanson.

But Swanson doesn't mind. "Don't blame Kennedy, blame me," she said.

"I don't want to be on a whole bunch of boards and stuff. I think my work is on the ground with people: renters and low-income people and working people and people who need free transit, and that's where I'm going to do my work."

Swanson said she only asked to be appointed to the joint council on childcare — which Stewart recommended — and the city's public housing corporation, which Stewart did not.

But she wasn't sure if she would fight to amend Stewart's motion on Monday so that could happen. 

"We need to get some housing built, we need to protect tenants, we need to end homelessness, and that's what I'm going to be working on," she said.