Incumbent says steady as she goes

Councillor Richard Rybiak runs for third term on his record, wants to see progress continue

BY JOHN SWART VOICE Correspondent

Richard Rybiak, incumbent Ward 1 council candidate, is running for a third term. As a child of Polish immigrant parents who chose to live in Pelham 55 years ago, he believes strongly that everyone should serve their community.

"I'm running because I can. It is a duty and an honour to offer my time, talent and wisdom, to make myself available, to contribute," says Rybiak.

[Editor's note: There are two Rybiaks in the race for council. Richard's sister Barbara is running in Ward 2.]

As an incumbent, Rybiak understands there are some in Pelham that want a clean sweep of the existing council. When questioned about his enthusiasm to run for a third term, he responded at length with a mix of personal reflections and comments on what are, in his opinion, the accomplishments of the existing council.

"I'm a great believer in the council, political bodies, changing over constantly to represent the views of the electorates. I firmly believe that once you've made your contribution, done your time, step aside and let somebody else do it. You asked about sweep aside, clean house. Sometimes that's not necessary, and I would say this is one of those times. I think it's necessary when it's gone badly off the rails, and when the people that have been involved in putting it off the rails have been responding to interests that are not the interests of the Town... then by all means sweep them aside.”

Rybiak says he waited to see who would declare their candidacy in Ward 1 before he decided to run again.

“I was interested to see whether I might serve the community better by removing myself and letting others who were progressive in their thinking and capable of moving forward. I'm not saying the people who are running in Ward 1 aren't, nothing like that, but I'm saying that I wasn't sufficiently confident to [withdraw]. I said, 'You know what, I'll make myself available if people want me to.'”

Rybiak proceeds to explain why he is prepared to stand on his record as a member of the current council.

"I don't think that the record of this council is one that would result in people saying it's time to clean house because everything is going wrong. I think that it is absolutely time for our council to develop in terms of its membership moving to the next phase...but I think that the record we have is one that is worthy of continuing.”

He suggests that some shift is necessary.

"We need to make a change in terms of our posture, because we have gone through periods of great growth and investment, and the investment part of that is pretty much complete. So we need now to do what anybody else would do in this [situation], which is get ourself to what we would refer to in industry as a 'steady state,’ in terms of a normal operation as opposed to growth. The thing we don't, I believe, have to do, is make a decision around everything that has been done is horrible and sweep it all aside, because it's not true, There are people who say so. There are, as probably in every community, some people who fancy themselves as being backroom, major politico king-makers, and attract to themselves that kind of attention and power where they possibly can, but they are very few and pretty insignificant generally speaking, and they are in this case absolutely wrong.”

Rybiak suggests that if one looks at the metrics by which the performance of a municipality is normally judged, Pelham's metrics are pretty good.

"If you compare those to other communities we're in excellent shape."

He contends that the Town is not out of money, and its reserves are not depleted.

"You can hear this because people want to take a back door, and they want to convince you of the worst possible interpretation. What we have done in this period of investment is a deliberate strategy by our treasury department, which is excellent, to save money by doing internal borrowing rather than going to an external. If somehow the roof were to cave in somewhere and it were necessary for us to dip into reserves, that would be the point we would convert that to external borrowing. But we have funds that we could use to bridge while we're going through this thing."

Rybiak continues to explain how he views the Town’s reserves.

"So if you were to look at the reserve situation what you would see is that we have reserves, we've borrowed against them, we can account for them, we know where they are, but we are using them to help finance the investment we've gone into. Part of going back to steady state is then of course we replenish them so as to bring them back from a position of being invested to a more liquid position.”

(In accounting terms,  an asset is said to be liquid if it is cash, or easy to convert into cash with minimal loss in value.)

"But for someone to say that we are out of money, broke, you know, that is so discrediting of actual fact, as to cause one to wonder how can anybody with a straight face even suggest something like that?"

Rybiak continues by discussing the new community centre. He asserts there were great hoards of people that wanted a community centre, and that it was understandable in a community like Pelham that there would be differing views on what the final product would entail, or whether it was even affordable.

He explains that the $36 million dollar budget for the community centre was arrived at with diligence, and represented the worst case scenario, in which the Town would have only the tax levy to finance it.

He also states that during planning stages, the commitment was that direct costs to residents would never exceed 25% of the total, or some $9 million dollars, and be financed by a 1.1% one-time-only tax levy increase. This amount would represent an increase of approximately $20 per year for his Ward 1 constituents.

"As somebody that comes out of business, that was absolutely correct, responsible thinking. Not what do we want to spend, but what can we afford?"

He asserts that the Town has exceeded its $3 million dollar donation goal; that development charges were “front-end loaded” and are coming in as anticipated, and that the Town is receiving offers on the real estate it wishes to sell.

"We have offers to purchase on big parts of it. Unfortunately we're in camera to look at these, and I can't really discuss them. What I'm telling you is, it's happening, that plan is going to come to reasonable fruition.”

For Rybiak, the desire to involve residents within Pelham isn't limited to the Community Centre.

"One of the things that we have done effectively is gone to the community and asked people in the community to participate with us in all of this. When we have advisory committees in a whole lot of different areas it's a strength. My sense is that we are going to put together an advisory committee on the operation of the new community centre going forward."

Rybiak suggests that voters will assess the motivations of the large numbers of council candidates running in this election.

"I'm glad they're running for office, that the community has the opportunity to pick and choose from those who have done it, want to do it, have the track record, and those who come at this from a perspective that basically says, 'You know what, anybody that thinks we're doing well here is wrong. A huge part of our population thinks we've accomplished a lot, they must be wrong, and we can do something different.' I don't understand where that comes from, but it does, and it's fine. I'm confident that our electorate can pick and choose between them."

Rybiak does not favour another audit of Town finances.

"We do an audit every year. There was a question raised within the past twelve months, completely baselessly, but the question was raised about a certain part of it, so we had an audit done, and it showed there was nothing wrong. You can continue beating that dead horse, it's not going to come to life. Our finances are in good shape, we have professional staff who, you can describe as more than having integrity. They are completely honest people."

When discussing the disposal of the Haist Street arena and the associated parkland, Rybiak states, "This is a really interesting case, because in the management of that land and that sale, the arena gets to move, but the parkland gets to stay. All of the parkland around that is going to be preserved, improved. All the public park amenities that are there continue. The residential [development] will be in conformity with the neighbourhood that's there, and with the involvement of people in the area.”

Regarding home-hotels, such as traditional B&Bs, as well as Airbnbs and Short Term Vacation Accommodations, Rybiak agrees with council's actions to date. He says, "Openly, and in public, what council said to staff [was to] begin the zoning bylaw amendment process, which includes public consultation, and bring a report and a recommendation as to how the bylaw should be changed in order to control Short Term Vacation Accommodation and B&Bs in a way that makes sense to this Town. There are some fairly extensive comments that I've made on this, and this is a point that I want to make very strongly. There ought also to be a bylaw that can be enforced around STVAs and B&Bs that involves licensing or permitting, because if you require operators to have a license in areas that are appropriately zoned for it, then you can make as a specific violation operation of something like this without a license. You can attach to that a penalty large enough that anyone trying to set up the B&B accommodation outside where it's zoned [realizes] the risk isn't worth taking. So people like to say, 'We don't want them licensed because we don't want them anywhere,’ but licensing allows you to know who is doing what, it allows you to say you can't do it because you don't have a license, and therefore you're subject to penalty."

He adds, "Staff has said it will take about four months to go through the process, which will take it past the election, and I guess the next council will do with it whatever it wants."

On the question of seniors' housing, Rybiak explains his position.

"When we determined that in East Fonthill part of the land should be made available [for sale], we made it a specific objective to bring in retirement homes, affordable housing, medical centres, that sort of thing. Those are the features that we have emphasized, and those are the things that the development community have responded to, and have purchased land or are offering to purchase land to accomplish. We have other offers from other operators of retirement homes, long term care facilities, medical centres, that want to develop in that area. And they want to do that because we said as a council, 'That's what we want.' Affordable housing is coming in block, but let me go one step further. I am completely supportive of provincial direction of allowing secondary units to be constructed in homes. There must be some limitations on that to make sure these homes are residential, but the fact is, the way in which we end up with affordable housing is by increasing supply. One of the ways to do that is to get out of the way of people who want to create a garden suite, a place for their parents, people who want to stay in their own home, but can't afford it anymore, and want to create a paying apartment."

Rybiak's professional career was in Human Resources, and his comments on Town staff reflect a sensitivity to the issues.

"One of the things that we have achieved is real excellence in our staff at the Town. Our staff have been allowed to participate in the management of this town to a degree that's far greater than you would ever expect. They are trained to look at problems, to think about causes, solutions, to participate in finding solutions, making decisions, implementing decisions, so that the end result is far more efficient ways of doing things."

Rybiak concludes by stating, "I'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish over the last couple of years. Everyone says things never change, yet they did change, for the better. And yeah, it was a bit disruptive, it wasn't perfect, neat, but I'll tell you something, this Town functions very, very well. Perfection we have not yet achieved, but it functions very, very, very well."