Meet the Mayor: 10+ years with gavel

MapleLine Magazine: Aug.25, 2010 << Back to Breaking News

By Mary P. Brooke

SOOKE, BC. This mayor wears her mantle of leadership like a glove made to fit. Whether at Council meetings or mingling with crowds at an endless stream of community and business events, Mayor Janet Evans is a natural. This is most fitting for Sooke, one of the most natural towns around.

As Sooke struggles to maintain its down-to-earth ambience (not to mention air, water and forest) during rapid growth and development, an easy-going mayor is an asset. Around Mayor Evans swirls the development of significant documentation (such as the 210-page Official Community Plan that took years to hammer out and finally adopted on May 17, 2010), major land and property developments (notably the Prestige Hotel and Mariner’s Village), and volatile community issues (rural vs. urban and the one highway that carries us all in and out of town). Within her is a pulse of peace that produces a steady pace, one issue dealt with after the next.

Likely still the small town gal within, Evans enjoys long hours at community teas and outdoor events, meeting people she has known for years since growing up in Port Renfrew and living in the Sooke area all her life. But the views of this well-travelled mayor are far-reaching. She took a delegation of District Councillors to California to scope out the best ideas for small community seaside developments and brought developer Mike Barrie on board to ultimately build Mariner’s Village. There’s nothing short-sighted about a mayor who handily greeted thousands of global visitors at the 2010 Olympics with a top-class display about her town.

Contentious issues? Some would challenge the mayor about tax levels, budget allocations, consultants’ studies, signage issues, and property zoning. But as is evident at council meetings, in one-on-one discussions and out on the hustings, this is a fair-minded mayor who can rock the boat toward progress without sinking the ship. Clear evidence is the modernization of Sooke over the past 10 years – while sporadic for some sectors, particularly small business, the area has grown with gusto since incorporating in 1999. Mayor Evans cites her overall key achievements as the expansion of the sewer system (that has enabled exponential residential development), the current work-in-progress of densifying the town core (to minimize rural disturbance), and shifting the retail/business sector closer to the waterfront (to achieve more tourism appeal).

The Mayor pays attention to achieving attainable housing, being careful to no longer say ‘affordable’.. How small can a lot go, and how should secondary (and illegal) suites be handled when it comes to fire/safety, sewer load and parking? She is pleased there is a local group of developers and builders with “the opportunity to talk among themselves”, a model she says works well in Langford.

Evans, whose mother now resides at Ayre Manor in town centre, is notably keen about making Sooke a place where people can ‘stay in place’. But she feels it’s okay that young adults leave after highschool to explore the world, likely to find, she muses, that Sooke is the best place to come back to. MM

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