KEEP YELLOWKNIFE WEIRD
a platform for city council
The starting point for this platform is that I love Yellowknife and I owe a lot to this community. And the parts I love most about Yellowknife are weird. I love that I have a floating sauna in the bay. I love that if I ask my friends if we should buy an old school bus and try and start a Makerspace out it, they say great! I love that when I ran for MLA at 28 years old I won by 6 votes. I have done a lot of weird things in this City and hope to continue to do.
I made insane films with Dead North Film Festival and last year launched a low budget reboot of Dead North which we called Still Dead. This summer I helped organize a 10 day meditation course on an old coast guard ship. I love that Still Dark, Still Dead, Dead North, and Steadily Deadly are all different festivals. I love that the City hired burlesque dancers at its Christmas party. I love that this City allows people to be who they want. There is something special about this place that you just can’t find anywhere else – trust me, I’ve lived in Vancouver.
When I first moved to Yellowknife, I lived in both a houseboat, and a highly not-building-code-compliant shack. This ramshackle living allowed me to save for my first house. This town provides so much opportunity to grow, not just in your career but in all aspects of life. It has given me so much, in such a weird way, and I want to ensure it can continue to do that for so many others, for decades to come. But Yellowknife doesn’t stay that way unless we all feel empowered to build community. For you, that might be your church, the random friends who came together to help you raise your children, a sport’s league, or your neighbours. It looks different for all of us but building those spaces is something Yellowknife does extremely well, and we must continue to do.
I know Yellowknife is facing an immense amount of challenges, and you might think a platform entitled “Keep Yellowknife Weird” is unserious in the face of those challenges. But I implore you to consider that the ONLY way Yellowknife can solve its problems is by doing it the Yellowknife way. We have all the tools we need to solve our problems, but we need to feel empowered to do the work. Community pride quickly gives way to apathy and naysayers if we don’t believe our amazing town is capable of tackling its challenges in true Yellowknife fashion. (And if you don't believe apathy is on the rise, just go spend 5 minutes in the comments of Yellowknife’s Rant and Raves.)
Fortunately the way to solve the largest community issues is to start small. To find the next easiest and smallest step we can take to improve our city and do it. Don’t study the problem, don’t hire a consultant or form a committee, just go do it. Incrementalism is much faster than sitting around waiting for the GNWT and the Federal Government to solve our problems. So without further ado, I present my platform to Keep Yellowknife Weird:
1. Housing – we can’t afford to be weird if no one can afford to live here
- Create a City-Owned Affordable Housing Development Corporation to develop housing in partnership with non-profits, Indigenous dev corps and other levels of government.
- Creating an Affordable Housing Development Corporation is one of the recommendations from the City's 2009 Affordable Housing Study, which is one of my favourite studies, but also a prime example of us creating a report that sits on a shelf. This corporation will be an arms length non-profit. As per the study it will require "an initial grant of land or equity in a project, but need not require ongoing subsidy or funding and should develop a business plan to be self-sufficient within a few years".
- Build another housing Co-op (thus bringing the City total up to three along with Inukshuk and Boreal Housing Co-ops).
2. Housing Again
- Accelerate and simplify permit processes, especially for smaller developments such as change-of-use approvals and constructing small structures.
- Give land away for $1 to any non-profit looking to build affordable housing.
- Bring more land to market.
3.City Hall Gets Out the Way
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Old Town for All Town – Mixed use zoning for everyone: Want to build a brewery next to a float plane base next to an autobody shop next to a bunch of NIMBYs? The city won’t get in your way! Want to put a daycare in Niven? Do it! Want to live above a bakery next to a carwash next to howling sled dogs? Have at it! Okay, there will still be some rules, but the point is having a variety of uses and the services you need and enjoy within walking distance of your home is one of the best parts of Yellowknife, and I want to keep it that way.
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Studies are hereby banned: The best way, and the Yellowknife way, to see if something will work is simply to try it. We will literally just try things, like the things in this platform, and you know what? If they fail – great, we will adapt and learn. Risk aversion is stifling our city. What we won’t do is pay some southern consultant thousands of dollars to study something and produce a report that we will then fail to implement. We’re just going to try things, some of which will work, some of which won’t and some of which will be weird.
4.The Little Things Matter
- We should have more than one off-leash dog park.
- More benches.
- More trails and signage.
- More community events.
5. The Big Things
- Invest in Downtown.
- Move the Library to a ground floor location.
- Develop the 50/50 lot.
That’s it! That's the plan! I will write some more detailed posts explaining these points in detail over the course of the campaign.
If you would like to get involved in the campaign, I'll need some help with literature drops, door knocking and putting signs up. If you would like to make a monetary donation you may send an e-transfer to rylund4council@gmail.com. Any support is appreciated, even it is just reminding your friends to vote.
That's it for now, see you on the campaign trail!