Sean Bujtas - Incumbent
Why should residents of Terrace vote for you?
I hope the residents have seen the good work I’ve done over the last 12 years, and especially the last four. I think I’ve been a strong advocate for Terrace, hopefully people recognize me as somebody that gets things done.
You know, I said in 2022 when I was running to be mayor and I was acclaimed at the time, I said some of my big priorities were getting a revenue sharing agreement down with the province, bringing, detox to the community, working with local First Nations, building relationships and work with government for more housing.
And I we’ve seen more housing. I signed a $250 million deal with the provincial government for a revenue sharing deal for municipalities from Vanderhoof to Masset.
You know, Terrace received $35 million of the $250 million. So $7 million a year for five years.
I strongly feel that I am the right person for the job. I think my track record has shown that I’m the right person for that job, and I hopefully am re-elected to continue doing that good work, because I really enjoy it and I love my community.
I have been here my entire life, have zero interest in leaving, and I want nothing but the best for this community and the people of it, and they deserve it.
In your term, the 4600 block is getting reconstructed. Some businesses have reported a 80 percent loss. How do you respond?
Yeah, it’s tough. And, you know, those businesses I feel for them. They were warned, over a period of two years that work was coming and it has to be done. You just don’t have a choice. Like that road wasn’t just done to make it look pretty. That road was done because it needed to be rebuilt.
There were wooden storm pipes in the ground there, like that road needed to be redone. There was just no question. And it’s tough. But you know what? You know, it’s the old saying, short term pain, long term gain and that piece is gonna be glory now when it comes to revenue for this community.
How do you plan on bringing in more money for Terrace to increase services?
A revenue sharing would be great, but that’s not going to that’s not going to help the pockets of of taxpayers. What that’s going to do is it’s going to put infrastructure in this community and and help us catch our infrastructure deficit up. It’s going to help us fix more roads. It’s going to help us build more amenities.
And so a long term revenue sharing is very important. With all this industry being made around our community. We’re a big part of that industry. So there’s no reason that we wouldn’t share in that wealth. But that is for infrastructure, for us to actually get ourselves to a point where we’re trying to reduce taxation on residents and commercial.
It’s a hard burden on residents and commercial in Terrace right now, because we have no industrial taxation. We need to get the Skeena Industrial Park off the ground. This joint venture with the First Nation. We need to get this off the ground. And this is another project that I’ve been working on quietly and slowly. The biggest piece that’s missing at the industrial park is we don’t have a water system up there.
However, strong relationships and strong conversations with the Prime Minister in the summertime earmarked $50 million for what he said were coastal communities, Prince Rupert and Terrace. And so that’s $25 million, I think, per community that’s coming. So we’re going to see 25 more million dollars. And that is for water infrastructure, which I suspect that will be able to put into the water system in industrial park.
And if we can do that, then hopefully we’ll be able to track small industry projects that will move into that park and start creating an industrial tax revenue.
Thoughts on a Data Center in the Skeena Industrial Development Park?
First of all, there’s no power. And then there’s no redundant data up here. So quite frankly, I don’t really see a world where a data center is ever coming to Terrace, British Columbia now.
I’m a firm believer that we also listen to people’s and their ideas before we just systematically shut them down. And I think it’s reasonable to listen to folk’s ideas.
The idea of a data center that just pulls water out of the ground, evaporates it into the air, or just pukes it out does not interest me in the slightest. I don’t think that’s the right use at all. I would struggle to even to listen to a proponent that wanted to do that. And in the end of the day, we, as the city control how much water we could give a proponent if they build something like this. So it would be quite easy to say, we don’t have that volume of water and you’re not going to get it.
But the other concern where data centers are just a nonstarter for me and that is the taxation.
They don’t pay high industrial taxation. This is an industrial park I want industry I want industry that pays high taxation. I don’t want a data center that gets taxed like commercial. So they’re paying like a coffee shop, or they’re paying like a grocery store or a restaurant. So, I just don’t think it’s the right fit up there for us.
Diana Penner
Why should residents of Terrace vote for you?
That’s up to them. I’m not doing any campaigning whatsoever. I’ve been here since 1965. Spent 61 years in this community in pretty much the same place.
I want Terrace to be the place where you want to live. Where my children want to live, where my neighbors want to stay, where we want to start out as children in and grow old in. Got it. And right now, I, as a senior in our community or an elder in our community, depending on how you want to look at it, I find that a lot of my friends and my associates are moving away because Terrace doesn’t have what they need to help them at this stage of their life.
Conversely, they’re leaving behind their children, their grandchildren, their families, their home, their sense of well-being and connectedness. I believe that we deserve that in our community, that we deserve a community that is there for us from the time we start till the time we end. And I don’t think we’re there and I don’t know if we will ever be there, but I would like to do my best to try to get there.
And this comes to safety. If you don’t have a safe place, nobody’s staying. So safety is huge in my mind. So it’s not just safety from the perspective of walking downtown. It’s safety walking on the streets. So we don’t we don’t have sidewalks in a lot of places in the wintertime, depending on how much snow load we get, there’s lots, lots of times when people are walking out on the street because there isn’t a place for them to walk safely.
How do you plan on bringing in more money for Terrace to increase services?
Maybe no industry it fit for Terrace. Maybe, that’s not Terrace role. For a long time Terrorists role was to be the service provider.
So using our tax dollars wisely. Growing our service ability and our community. So maybe it is industry there. There is some implications at their service or that there’s industry coming and I don’t know I don’t know enough. I’m not in the loop at this time. I would need to look into that for far deeper than it is.
We also live in a place that is truly remarkable. So we live in a place that is astoundingly beautiful. And I think that that we undervalue the industry of tourism. So in my mind, tourism is a viable industry that that can be utilized a lot more in this community than it is.
Thoughts on a Data Center in the Skeena Industrial Development Park?
Absolutely not. It’s the same thing as that flare and Kitimat. Because the long term health benefits to our community are not worth the gain. In that case, they should have worked on that. They could have had LNG and not had that flare. But the way that they set it up, that’s the way they ended up. So the data center brings with it all sorts of problems that are not worth the risk.
In my mind, we can’t risk the sound that will come from it. We can’t. The damage to our our bodies from the sound that emanates from data centers is huge. We can’t have the necessary use of water for that purpose. And at the same time, like, I mean, how many times during the year do we say, sorry, you can’t water on this day.
You have to water on odd days, you have to water on even days. Data center doesn’t care about any of that sort of stuff.
If there was a data center that was proposed, that and has some long term benefits, that is proven to, to not be a problem to the the individuals who live in that community, if there was a proposal that was more environmentally friendly for the the average person who lives in the community, and that those long term costs to have something like that come forward don’t outweigh the costs of not having it there. Then, you know, depending on the information, it would it.
Terry Fulljames
Why should residents of Terrace vote for you?
My perspective as a building inspector, I see the stresses that people are going through. They’re trying to buy a new home for their family, and they cannot. So then, okay, they have to renovate a home. And that becomes problematic, too, because, there’s all the problems with the cost associated with that. As they do that, they are forced to buy something that they cannot afford. And, the banks are not helping either.
So that upside down pyramid is kind of my core piece is that we really need to support families, whether it be, you know, educational programs, whether it’s lower taxes or, you know, lower landfill fees and, and just generally making it more viable. And I think that’s what’s missing is so when you talk about the BC building code, for example, we have all these new things coming, we’ve got the, the step code, if you’ve heard of that, it’s where, where they’re legislating energy efficiency into the building, which is great, but we should have some control over that.
How do you plan on bringing in more money for Terrace to increase services?
So I mean it’s, it’s a simple balance sheet really. You know money in money required to do the things we need to do. And a lot of this comes from, you know, other levels of government as well. But I mean, and then chasing that down and I think Sean’s doing a great job of chasing down money.
And I think that’s an important piece. And I think that needs to continue to happen. But I think that we need to put the emphasis on the families themselves to lower taxes in the long run.
And then when I talk about generational change or, you know, I say we need a legacy leader. I’m not here as a politician that wants a career.
I’m only here probably for one term, to try to make some generational change. I want my family to be more comfortable here with lower taxes and more opportunity. And that’s the key piece for me.
Thoughts on a Data Center in the Skeena Industrial Development Park?
Where am I with the data center, I don’t see the benefits of a data center, but I don’t have all the data yet. And I don’t think that I’m necessarily for a data center. And because we don’t, there’s a bunch of unknowns that come with it. And, you know, I think that the the experts, the people that need to weigh in on it haven’t really weighed in on it for our community yet. But when it comes, I know council is talking about it right now. But when it does come, I want to understand the topic well before I form my opinion in a solidified way.
You know, I think that’s what a good leader does, makes a very educated decision on what is viable. And then maybe ultimately it has to come down to the community as a whole, say, is this something we want to move forward with?