PENTICTON — Parksville shipbuilding executive Mike Butler has entered the Parksville mayor race, saying city hall should stop sending taxpayers the bill before it has squeezed more work out of the money it already collects.Butler is the only candidate on the mayoral ballot who does not already sit on council. Councillors Mary Beil and Joel Grenz also filed before the 4 p.m. nomination deadline. Mayor Doug O’Brien is not running again. Six council seats are on the same October 17 ballot.“Now is the time for good fiscal management and job growth through locally operated businesses,” Butler said in a campaign release. “We need to stop asking taxpayers for more and start creating more opportunity for the people who live here.”Butler is chief executive of Coastal Gateway Port, a Canadian maritime firm that has told the Western Standard it wants shipbuilding and repair capacity back on Vancouver Island. Prince George-North Cariboo MLA Sheldon Clare posted Friday that he was pleased to see “my friend Mike Butler running for mayor in Parksville” and that voters should look at the platform..Butler tied the tax case to work with the RDN Taxpayers Alliance. He said a petition against proposed tax increases drew more than 2,100 signatures.“The message was clear: taxpayers are concerned about where we are heading,” he said. “A proposed 139 percent increase in taxes over ten years is not sustainable for our seniors, families and homeowners.”.Water is the second plank of Butler’s mayoral campaign. He wants Parksville to treat supply as a regional file with neighbouring municipalities and the regional district, and to look at storage, conservation, reuse and new technology instead of what he called a drought mindset.“Water is a regional resource. It doesn’t stop at a municipal boundary, and our approach to managing it shouldn’t either,” he said.“The goal should be simple: secure our water future while lowering the cost of water for residents.”He also wants more food grown on local farmland with Dutch-style greenhouses and water-efficient systems, and he says residents should keep the right to rent their own homes to visitors under community rules.“This isn’t just about tourism. For some residents, renting their home is a locally operated business that helps put food on the table.”.As a CEO, Butler is someone who knows jobs. The jobs list in the release runs from welding and boatbuilding to nurseries, wildfire work, film and mineral technology. Butler said young people should be able to stay in Parksville, buy a house, and to raise a family.“Building and manufacturing our own boats and ships has been a bedrock of Vancouver Island for generations,” he said. “We should be building the boats, developing the technology and creating the skilled careers right here on Vancouver Island.”Butler's run for mayor arrived in the same week a union-commissioned report put a price on sending the next generation of coastal ferries offshore. BC Ferries awarded four new Summit-class vessels last year to China Merchants Industry Weihai Shipyards after no Canadian yard submitted a final bid. The first of those ships is slated for service in 2029. The contract value has not been disclosed but the aforementioned report reverse-engineers it at about $1.6 billion..Butler is pairing his call for more jobs and greater prosperity with a call to maintain British Columbia’s natural beauty — wetlands, salmon, bald eagles and herons — and said growth and protection can run on the same track.“Our natural habitat is one of our greatest assets,” he said. “We have a responsibility to protect it for future generations.”Parksville elects a mayor and six councillors to four-year terms. Advance voting is October 7 and October 14, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Jensen Centre, 132 Jensen Ave. East. General voting day is Saturday, October 17, same hours, at the Jensen Centre and Parksville Fellowship Baptist Church. Turnout in 2022 was 33.9%.“Our future should not be defined by how much more we can tax our residents,” Butler said. “It should be defined by how well we manage what we have and how much opportunity we can create.”
