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Marlo Franson

Independent for Vancouver Council
My Plan is to go into City Hall and start introducing my initiatives that will begin solving some of the problems this city faces. There are solutions and when well written, to the point policies are created we can start moving forward easily. Time to clean up City Hall. Thank U

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Misc. topics

Accessibility

I have heard of lack of accessibility to certain places for all and I want to identify these immediately, ask for volunteers and push funds to fix all these problems asap. We can do this cheaply but fast and with help from our community.

Affordable Housing

Affordable Housing is the Key to this city's survival and prosperity. We need to keep young talent & families in this city, so they can work and contribute to making Vancouver beautiful. If we have minimum wage jobs we need to make sure those who make little live affordable.

The introduction of AirBNB and other services, the foreign buying of our homes, the empty homes, and the sky rocketing rent has changed this city into a: "too hard to live city". We need to freeze rents for low income, we need to build affordable homes and rental units, we need to fast track these developments, not forgetting community centers.  We need to save East Side from gentrification, we have to make homes for the workers who need a start that is affordable to them.

I think I can offer a loud voice in City Hall for common sense Housing development. I have an idea to create package development, that an affordable housing projects needs to be built before you can do your other housing project.  This way we offer incentives to do this work and create a longer building package for the developer keeping many people employed for years. I plan on fast tracking affordable housing or low income residences over other development projects that are not yet started the process. We will push out a 1 year action plan for the next 4 years on affordable housing so people will keep up-to-date on what is happening.

Rest assured this will be a great time to work on this as it is the biggest thing on the campaign trail. Mind you this is again an issue so I promise to take care of this so it won't be an issue 4 years from now.

Arts and Culture

I have heard and received many emails on Arts & Culture with a question of asking me to help make it a priority. I can say that I will do what I can to get new community festival going, to ensure funding is committed in schools, and to hire artists ourselves. I got this.

The city has a diverse group of people who we all want to keep but with high rents and low incomes it is very tough on the Artist. I want to work with the Arts & Culture, to ensure it is out there in the schools. I want to create more community oriented festivals featuring artists of all types, who can sell their stuff. I love to see a new entertainment district in South Vancouver that has Arts Theme and venues. I want to hire local Artists to paint murals in town, and create our own city clothing with local Artists designs and images. It is important for the City to Work with Artists to make sure we know who is in our City.

Cannabis Legalisation & Policy

This is a new policy that was just introduced, but federal government is not ready to supply all of Canada, till then I would keep the stores open as we process applications still. We will make sure we follow the BC method we have been doing for decades and not raid places.

City Police

I plan on meeting with the City Police directly to understand myself what is happening in this city. I also plan on creating a new security division to replace some work so police can concentrate more on crime. I expect to learn a lot from the Police and help them decrease crime

I have a degree in Psychology and a minor in Criminology and Sociology. I understand the behaviours of people, their methods, the problems they face and crimes they commit. I have a good understanding on these subjects and I can put forth my ideas and knowledge on ways to decrease crime, and to save money.

Community Safety and Security

I want to create a new security dept. that are well trained to take over some of the police duties of partiers dwtn and film locations . This way we can move police to more community safety patrols ,outing to the public and more police work than security work.

Community-Building

I am looking at finding volunteers for help in building community projects or repairs to current infrastructure. I hope we can come together as a community to help build our city and use City Hall revenues to pay for materials. We need more fun in this city via you.

Development and Overdevelopment

I am looking to fast track some great affordable and low income housing, and also better community centers for the East Side. In order for this to happen we may attach this work to other work so developers have no choice what to work on. Help out Low Income before profit.

Diversity

We must ensure our city is safe for all and that means we have to ensure we are helping anyone or any group that is not making it work in Vancouver. What are the issues, who is suffering, and how can we at City Hall help? Where we find problems we can ensure we look into it.

Drug Use

I know we have an issue with drug use and want more testing sites, similar to what is offered at music festivals. Hopefully, helping those addicts get their needs screened to reduce emergencies and overdoses. We need to track the people in need and create methods of help.

Environment & Sustainability

I am looking to move Vancouver into a new area of sustainability, adopting clean energy like solar power, reusing grey water, sorting garbage, opening up home gardens for resell, saving produce from grocery stores and more.

Good Governance

I want to represent the people of Vancouver and work with them not against them. I will hear the issues again and address them when I can. I want to ensure I am not displacing people for profitable developments and keeping our city safe.

Green Space

I love green space like Stanley Park, I hear we are underfunded in the Parks Gardeners so we can hire more employees to keep our city green and clean. We need to keep our green space as well, not removing any is a must.

Homelessness

Traveling around this city, you can see tents in bushes, pop up tents at night, people just huddled in back alley's. You can see the homeless and you know City Hall has ignored this issue. Well it's time to stop. I believe can help out on a few few fronts to better organize it.

It is an unfortunate situation that has someone end up homeless, I can see it first hand and know it's an issue that needs to be addressed. The only way to address this is to get to know those out on the street but you must help them to do that. I would propose, small tent communities, restricting size but offering them help and knowing who they are. As we try to revitalize alley's we find some alley's we can allow people to set up tents over night, while offering them help, offer amenities to use and make sure they are protected from the elements.

We will have to work on temporary housing and that can only be done when we work with the community to find places for them to stay over night. This process to get people off the street will be a tough one but we can do it humanly and proper while getting to know who they are and what they may actually need. I look forward to this challenging change.

Jobs

I want to start some new business models in City Hall that turns us into a business, with new employees running this businesses. As we expand these business we can hire more people as income is increased. I want to make sure we have homes for low income jobs takers.

Mental Wellness

There is a need to help those in need and there are many who are not getting the attention. There is a great new building in North Vancouver that specifically deals with this and we would have to consult with them on how we can improve Vancouver's mental health issues.

Natural Disaster Measures

We just had National Shake Up day. I will review and probable agree with what the professionals have already completed. The one thing I want to add is isolating our energy grid to work with solar energy when the main power goes down.

Pedestrian Safety

I have an idea to promote more reflective gear wear, push for more 3D laser lights at intersections for enhancing the old lights. I have a great idea that I can not divulge till I get it going but it will help people and cars identify each other easily for safer streets.

Public Engagement

I want to create a City Hall App that allows Vancouverites to interact with us faster and in real time. No more unanswered phone calls or emails, but everyday we can wake up to see what the issues are of the day. We then can start answering the issues in real time.

Public Transit

I like the idea that Hamilton now is doing, so the program is written for buses to pick up passengers at home and drop them off where they are going. I can see creating more underground travel & possible personal pick up in cars via transit employees as they got the licensing.

Reconciliation

We have a great new plan for False Creek working with 1st Nations that may come to be soon. I would also like to create a National Reconciliation Day to recognize Canada's history and how we got here today, giving back respect to those who suffered under colonial rule.

Recreation

I love recreation and activities around this, that I want a create a new division to start a great new recreational themed city. I will attempt to get some fun activities back with the community festivals I want to see as well increase. Rest assured, I want fun for everyone.

Recycling

There has to be an action plan to change how we recycle in this city, more bio-degradeable products need to be created. We have to separate our garbage out better & ensure less goes into land fills. Even offering deposits on products that don't have it yet, to better recycling

I am looking to make Vancouver more of an effort to manage our garbage and what should be recycled over throwing out. Incentives, such as adding deposit returns on new products, to penalties for business who do not thoroughly recycle. We will have to change our plastic dependence to more green technologies/inventions. We need a new recycling agenda to help bring down the costs of garbage removal with plans to train/educate our youth to change our future.

Road Maintenance

Vancouver has always had good maintenance of roads, expect the snow removal issues, but we can be assured that is now fixed. So we only have to worry about small isolated repairs in this city.

Seniors

We need to build more senior homes and make sure they are affordable or helped by City Hall so that the low income retirees are able to live in the city they grew up in, before they forced to leave because we did not build these infrastructures.

Sewage and Water Infrastructure

We are running out of water, there are businesses that tend to abuse water and maybe it is time to start charging for overuse by some business (hotels, restaurants). This maybe a start to ensure our water is not gonna be drained. Sewage needs to be better recycled back.

Small Business

I want to freeze rents on commercial units and stop the high rise in taxes before we drive out all small business. We do not need their tax money as we want them to survive. We will look at getting the space reduced in price as well when one wants to lease a space.

Sports and Leisure

I want to create new tournaments at all levels of interest for our youth and young adults. Let's get sports back on the map in this city. I will definitely look at the leisure aspect of the city but we seem to got that down pretty good.

Taxes

I am looking forward to creating more businesses for the City Hall, that will create more revenue for the city and then we can lower property taxes. It will be a long road ahead but least I can get more funds coming in through all the new businesses we start.

Traffic

I want to move traffic forward in this city, as we move to tunneling, but before then, I want a better computer system to direct traffic and I will get rid of left turns on major streets during rush hour. They are horrible in moving traffic so they gotta go for faster traffic.

Trans Mountain Pipeline

I know we have many pipelines in this country already and smaller ones are constantly being built. We need to focus on electric cars and not oil but till then pipelines are coming even as we battle against them. To me they make no sense as we move green, so not for it.

Vibes

There is a no fun city attachment to Vancouver, well with me at the Helm, I can change that. New Community festivals, new sports tournments, promotions for more conventions, promotion for travel to Vancouver, increase areas for Arts and Culture places. How about more parades?

Youth

I am looking at creating more tournaments for all sports in this city, helping youth look activity that they can afford or do. I hope I can move them to a better future with recreational improvements throughout the city.

Biography

submitted by the candidate or their team
I was born in Regina Sask, graduated from UofS and moved to Vancouver in 1994. I spent several more years at UBC learning more history, geography, native studies and criminology. I have watched politics most of my life and love the fact I am running. I am an rec biker & reader.

I know how to put effort into a project because of my education and tons of essays I have written. I understand the issues and am a realist. I know what to look for to make it known, I am good at what I do. I got purpose now and I want you to know I am working for the voters.

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