Coldstream Mayor Likes His Chair

By Tom Mark

Sep 6, 2018 | 11:59 AM

Coldstream Mayor Jim Garlick is going for a 4th term.

Garlick has submitted his nomination papers for the October 20th civic election.

There are on-going projects he wants to be involved in and doesn’t want to be a politician who starts something and leaves.

“You gotta stay around. You gotta try and stay around and make sure it starts down that pathway
considerably so that it reaches fruition.”

He says otherwise, you get too many changes and never get where you want to go.

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Garlick points to the track next to Okanagan College, the Master Water Plan and Kal Tire North as examples of projects local politicians kept plugging away on.

He says there are some issues in the community he wants to be a part of dealing with.

“I’ve had more and more people coming to me about concerns with traffic and speeding and just dangerous driving in the area. We’ve had concerns for years in Coldstream about the presence of RCMP there.”

Coldstream has seven officers assigned to it but a recent review found three were plain clothes officers and there was concern the district wasn’t benefiting from them.

Garlick says the RCMP has since shifted them elsewhere.

He wants make sure policing in the community is appropriate and there is oversight of that policing.

One of his priorities is another review of the RCMP.

“We’ve asked that they provide us with information to make a determination whether we should be housing our officers in another detachment. We could partner with Lumby. They have a building that’s adequate in size, they say. And they have a cell and such.”

He’s not ruling out housing the officers in a building within the district, possibly sharing space and cost with the RCMP traffic division which is looking for its own space.

Garlick was considering running for council instead.

“I had some conversations with people who said probably I wouldn’t be very satisfied sitting on council. It would be better for me to either run for mayor, get in or not, rather than sitting on council and sort of being half in the game.”

Garlick says he has the full support of his family who see the satisfaction he gets serving the community.

He joked that his kids are at an age where they’re heading off on their own a lot more than he thought and they’re a lot more capable than he thought they were and they don’t need him quite as much as he anticipated.

by Tom Mark