If we aren’t already friends – and I hope we are, or soon will be -- let me introduce myself: I’m Pam Tarr, and I’m running for the LCC, our Local Community Commission, in the upcoming October election.

Who I am

I fell in love with Salt Spring at first sight just over 5 years ago, and within months I was living here. I know that barely even qualifies me as a newcomer, but with my husband Jon Cooksey I got involved quickly. My background is in communications– I probably produced your favourite ‘90’s music video – but I’ve also done labour negotiations, run companies and done extensive political and fundraising work, with organizations like Rock the Vote, Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project and the Carbon Underground. Jon and I started off by raising money for the Community Park on Hwmet’utsun (Mount Maxwell), then I helped get out the Homes for Islanders report, and that led me to working with Transition Salt Spring, where I’ve been advocating for a more resilient community in the face of a warming and increasingly fractured world. At TSS we realized that protecting our fragile ecosystems from uncontrolled development is the same goal as building affordable housing in the right places to support our economy and our future.

Why I’m running

I like diving into the big conversations, the ones that really matter both to the people who are hurting and to the ecosystem of all living things here on Salt Spring. Those conversations, which include what to do about the Salt Springers living on the water in Ganges Harbour, affordable housing, how to care for our elders, our tourism economy with its joys and problems, Indigenous rights, how best to protect our forests, our limited water supply, our endangered farms, and so many more, are obviously the most difficult and often the most divisive conversations. That’s where I feel most needed, and most able to help.

I was raised in a political family, with the message that we can’t expect others to create the world we want to live in. My family saw the opportunity to hold office as a great honour, and believed in working across the aisle, because how else could everyone be well represented?

We don’t have to be an argument surrounded by water anymore (as much fun as that can be). To steal a phrase from my friend and colleague Bryan Young, we can be an island of sanity instead. That was the premise of the Common Ground Summit that Jon and I organized for TSS last year, and if you ask someone who was there, they’ll likely tell you how surprised they were at how much agreement there was. We tend to focus on what we disagree about. But that’s not the obstacle. The obstacle is thinking that disagreeing about a few things means we can’t trust each other or work together on the big stuff we do agree about.

Take a look at the world. It’s time for a us take a deep breath, see each other as allies, and start to work on the hard stuff together.

What I plan to do

The LCC was an experiment when created three years ago. Now we have the potential to make this commission the driving force of local government by having conversations with the Islands Trust and the improvement districts on how to work together for the future. We need the big issues on our island – housing, water, wildfire, adapting to climate change, food security and the economy -- to be addressed systemically, and that means leadership by an agency that represents the will of all Salt Springers, not just subsets from around the island. We can’t keep listening to the same voices when so many are not being heard. We need to bring democracy to life in a transparent structure that that doesn't just listen to community input but acts on it.

I'm eager to work with a bold new version of the LCC -- new and returning commissioners who vote as equals with a new CRD Director --and with our other government agencies to create a new path forward. Our most critical task will be to start working together effectively on complex problems that are beyond the scope and jurisdiction of any one agency. Multi-solving through multi-agency cooperation, rather than sequentially booting problems from one agency to another in hopes that the problem will die of old age before someone is required to solve it!

But the phrase “multi-agency” doesn’t really mean anything, because we’re really talking about people, ranging from the hardy souls who have chosen public service in the face of often scorching criticism from all sides, to exhausted volunteers who are filling the cracks in the system that government doesn’t have the money, time or expertise to reach. My skillset, my upbringing and my strength is in creating working relationships that lead to real progress. This is the reason I hope you’ll give me your vote, and vote thoughtfully for the other members of a new LCC team.

As a team, with a centralized budget that includes all sources of revenue, decided on and managed as a team, we can be more effective and deliver better value for your hard-earned tax dollars. But we can be more than just fiscally responsible. The LCC can become the visionary centre of a network of amazing people – you among them, because it will take all of us – so that we can move together better into an uncertain future, caring for the least among us while making the bold moves we need to make, to ensure our community not only survives but thrives.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and if you have questions, please reach out to me. I want to hear from you, and I’ll listen.

Find out more at pamtarr.ca, or email me directly at pam@pamtarr.ca.