'Preserving the best of West Vancouver': Mayor Kirk LaPointe's full inaugural speech | Daily Hive

'Preserving the best of West Vancouver': Read Mayor Kirk LaPointe's full inaugural speech

Mayor Kirk LaPointe and District of West Vancouver councillors. (District of West Vancouver)

Kirk LaPointe used his first address as the Mayor of West Vancouver to promise residents a greater voice in local decisions, careful management of the municipal government’s money, and an approach to growth that allows more people to build their lives in the community.

He and the new District of West Vancouver Council were sworn in during the inauguration ceremony on the evening of Monday, Nov. 2, with LaPointe defeating incumbent Mark Sager during last month’s civic election.

The veteran journalist and media executive brings decades of experience overseeing newsrooms to West Vancouver’s municipal government.

His previous roles include managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, the executive editor of the National Post, and CBC’s ombudsman for English services. He was also the longtime publisher and executive editor of Business in Vancouver and executive of Glacier Media (now known as Lodestar Media) up until 2023. He regularly wrote about and commented on provincial and municipal politics.

He has also taught journalism at the University of British Columbia and served on the board of directors for various local organizations.

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This was not his first attempt to enter politics. LaPointe, who lives in West Vancouver’s Caulfeild neighbourhood, previously unsuccessfully ran for Vancouver mayor under the Non-Partisan Association banner in 2014, against Gregor Robertson.

More than a decade later during his mayoral election campaign in West Vancouver, LaPointe promised to bring the projected 2027 municipal tax increase down from nearly seven per cent to three per cent, followed by a cap on annual municipal spending growth at half the inflation rate after 2027.

He also promised to eliminate the municipal government’s pay parking, develop a revitalization plan for West Vancouver’s four commercial villages of Ambleside, Dundarave, Horseshoe Bay, and Caulfeild, and seek the provincial government’s permission to create a new tax on vacant storefronts.

His housing platform called for smaller-scale, multi-unit housing that prioritizes seniors, young families and first responders while preserving neighbourhood character. He identified an urgent and primary care centre as his first priority for a public-private partnership, and proposed advancing arts, skating and seniors’ facilities.

Kirk LaPointe. (Kirk LaPointe)

He also committed to restoring advisory committees, holding twice-monthly public question-and-answer sessions, and reducing closed-door Council meetings.

At Metro Vancouver Regional District, his promises included pushing for an independent review of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant, seeking changes to its funding formula and repayment period, and refusing additional regional compensation.

In his inaugural speech, LaPointe emphasized the responsibility to hear from residents before decisions take shape. He acknowledged that Council would face competing expectations as it seeks to preserve the community’s character, while creating opportunities for people to remain there as they age and for younger generations to establish homes nearby.

“We cannot promise everyone the answer they want. But we can promise respect, openness and an honest account of the decisions we make,” he said.

LaPointe will serve alongside returning councillors Linda Watt, Peter Lambur, and Scott Snider, and newly elected councillors Lee Lau, Jaime Webbe, and Tim Webb.

Below is the full transcript of Mayor LaPointe’s inauguration speech:

West Vancouver Mayor Kirk LaPointe’s inaugural speech

Welcome, everyone, to the celebration of our investiture as your new Council.

Between the mountains and the sea, we live in one of the most beautiful places in the greatest country in the world. And believe you me, I feel the honour of this moment, but I also feel its responsibility, and the weight of the challenge to represent the ambitions of a community I love.

I want to begin by thanking those who have served before us, particularly Mayor Mark Sager and councillors Sharon Thompson, Christine Cassidy and Nora Gambioli. Public service asks much of those who undertake it: time, energy, judgment and, often, sacrifices that are not always visible to the community. Each has brought a deep commitment to West Vancouver and a determination to make it a better place.

We owe them our gratitude for the work they have done and for the foundation they have helped build. We inherit that work with appreciation and respect, knowing that good government is a continuing endeavour, one Council building upon the efforts of those who came before it.

I am profoundly fortunate to share my life with Mary Lynn, an accomplished academic of extraordinary strength, intelligence and integrity, my guide and moral compass, who has my deepest love and gratitude. Tonight my sister Ruth is here from Toronto, along with my stepdaughter Jane, her husband Matthew and his mother Lianne from Vancouver. I am touched and blessed by their kindness, and by the kindness and support of my children, Michael in Toronto and Vanessa in the Netherlands.

To be trusted with the future of a place you love is a rare privilege. To be worthy of that trust is the work of every day that follows. The measure of public service is not the power or the authority we are given, but the good we do with the trust placed in our hands.

To serve a community is to be invited into its hopes and disappointments, its memories and aspirations, its anxieties and dreams. It is to be handed the keys to a house that many people built, and in which many more will live. There is something especially moving about being asked to serve the place you call home.

I am made more confident by the Council I will work alongside. Our returning councillors bring a remarkable range of experience: Linda Watt from the creative industries and community advocacy, Peter Lambur from architecture and urban planning, and Scott Snider from business and professional mediation. Each brings not only the knowledge of a career, but the experience of public service. I will learn from them, as I will from our new councillors: Lee Lau, from medicine, health care and clinical leadership; Jaime Webbe, from international diplomacy, executive leadership and financial management; and Tim Webb, from local business, commercial property and community economic development.

Together, they bring an extraordinary breadth of professional experience and a shared commitment to the community we are privileged to serve.

We will also be supported by a dedicated Municipal staff whose professionalism and commitment to this community deserve our gratitude.

My own career has taken me into newsrooms, boardrooms and classrooms, and into the difficult work of leading people and organizations through change. I have learned that leadership is less about having all the answers than about knowing which questions to ask, whose voices to hear and when to make a decision. And I have learned that the greatest accomplishments are seldom the work of one person. I hope to bring these lessons, and a willingness to keep learning, to the service of this Council and this community.

In hundreds of conversations these past months, I heard an appetite for change. But I heard just as clearly an appetite to preserve and protect what people cherish. I heard a community that wants to welcome newcomers from wherever, so they want to stay forever.

People want us, of course, to be responsible with their money. They have their own challenges, and they see the challenges facing other levels of government. They want us to keep our own house in order, because they expect surprises are coming. A prudent community, like a prudent household, fixes the roof while the sun is shining.

They want West Vancouver to grow without the growing pains. They want their neighbourhoods to be at least as good as they found them. But they also want to be able to stay here as they age, and they want their children to be able to build lives nearby rather than watching from across the water.

Earlier today, we met as a Council to share what our campaigns have taught each of us about what West Vancouver wants, so that we can develop the plans to deliver it.

We believe the privilege of public service asks, first of all, that we listen.

We were elected, but not by everyone, and our role is to make sure every voice has a genuine opportunity to be heard. That means hearing people not simply when decisions have already been made, but early enough that they can help shape them. It means hearing not only those who speak the loudest, but those whose voices are too seldom heard: the renter and the newcomer, the young person who has never been asked, the senior who may have stopped expecting to be.

We cannot promise everyone the answer they want. But we can promise respect, openness and an honest account of the decisions we make.

These are the needles we have to thread. We have to find the balance between what we treasure and what we aspire to become.

Think of the old trees on our hillsides. They are rooted deep enough to withstand a century of storms, yet every spring they put out new growth. Roots and branches are not at war with each other. One makes the other possible.

So it is with us. Preserving the best of West Vancouver and preparing for its future are not opposing objectives. They are part of the same promise.

We will not get everything right. No Council ever does. But we can bring good judgment, open minds, honest intentions and a willingness to learn. We can disagree without being divided. So we will be ambitious without being reckless, practical without being timid, and respectful of our past without being afraid of our future. We will not only listen clearly, but communicate clearly.

We are only temporary stewards of something enduring.

Long before any of us arrived, the Squamish people knew these shores, these rivers and these mountains. Others followed, and built, and gave. We inherit a community shaped by the vision and generosity of those who came before us. And we hold it in trust for those who will follow, including generations we will never know, who will walk paths we cleared and sit in the shade of trees we chose to protect.

Our time in office is brief against the long life of West Vancouver. The mountains measure time in millennia. The tides keep their own calendar. A term of Council is barely a season.

I am encouraged by the kindness and generosity of the people I meet on our streets, who believe, as I believe, in the greatness of where we live, and that our best days are still to come.

Tonight I give thanks for inheriting something precious. We have been entrusted with something important. And together, we have the opportunity to leave something better. What matters is not how long we serve, but what remains when our service is done.

The trust we strengthen, the opportunities we create and the good we accomplish together can endure.

That is the promise of public service. That is the privilege of this moment.

And that is the hope with which we begin.

Thank you, West Vancouver. I am deeply honoured to serve you.

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