More than 16 years ago, Lou Sekora made a decision that he says he still regrets to this day: resigning the mayor's chair in Coquitlam to jump into federal politics.
Now, after serving two years in Ottawa as a member of Parliament for the former Port Moody-Coquitlam riding and as a city councillor since 2005, he wants his old job back.
"We would go back to the policies we had when I was mayor," said the 84-year-old Sekora, who held the office from 1983 to 1998. "We do not have leadership. If we had real leadership this would be a different thing."
On the campaign trail, as he has done at the council table, Sekora rails against what he calls a growing civic bureaucracy and the increasing size of government.
He has stated that he can cut 5% out of the budget without impacting services, a feat he has promised before but said he could not accomplish because council would not support him.
(In the 2011 election campaign, he stated publicly he could single-handedly find $5 million in savings without staff or service cuts but failed to offer details of those cuts. The next year on council, he stated he could find $3 million in savings "without any staff cuts, without any service cuts or anything else," again failing to offer details to colleagues.)
"Nobody would listen," he said, later adding that current Mayor Richard Stewart has kept council "in the dark and they don't see the whole picture."
One area where Sekora said he could find savings is in the money that is spent on staff time. Currently, city managers sit through long meetings while council deliberates issues that may not necessarily impact their departments, he said. If committees were broken up by departments, Sekora said that less time would be wasted.
He also wants to limit hiring and pull back the reins on overall staffing costs.
"The city is loaded up with bureaucrats," he said. "There are bureaucrats we don't have to have. Every time you go to a meeting, we have another manager."
Sekora has outlined a list of promises in his election platform: He wants to hire more RCMP officers to conduct better traffic enforcement. Like the rest of council, he wants to protect the Riverview Hospital lands from development and keep it as a health care facility. He wants to rebuild Mackin House, Place des Arts, Place Maillard and Dogwood Pavilion, and make civic government more transparent.
If elected, he said he will even push for the amalgamation of the Tri-Cities, something he believes could save taxpayers in the area $20 million per year.
Sekora said he can accomplish all this while keeping taxes low and inviting for business and entrepreneurs. "There is a lot of fat in the budget," he said. "It is a budget that is run by the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy has taken over the city hall and the politicians."
Sekora has a long history in the community. He moved to Coquitlam in 1947, eventually winning a seat on council in the 1973 civic election. Ten years later he was mayor.
Today, having recently celebrated his 84th birthday - that would make him 88 at the end of the next council term - Sekora said he is not slowing down anytime soon.
"It's all about how you feel," he said. "Jimmy Pattison is much older than me and he runs an empire My health is perfect and I feel good."
