As more council hopefuls stick signs along various Whitehorse roads, it’s likely you haven’t seen one name on any of those posters: Gary Smith.
That lack of promotion is on purpose, Smith told the News.
“What am I going to advertise? I don't own a suit and tie or have money to go out and pay for big portrait signs or whatever, or radio ads,” Smith said. “I think that defeats the purpose.”
Smith is a local painter running for council. He said he is running to represent working people.
“I think that that's what we need on the city council is someone that is actually out in the workforce, out in the city. Every day, I'm out from seven in the morning until most days nine at night,” he said.
Smith said he came to Whitehorse as a single parent 26 years ago. He worked in manual labour until he got his foot in the door as a painter.
His top priority would be to try to do something about what he calls wasteful city spending.
“I see lots of city crews out working, but I see one or two people actually doing the work, and three or four, sometimes more, standing just overseeing like and I find that is a waste of money,” he said.
He also said while he sees a lot of full city busses every morning, most of the ones he sees in the afternoon are empty. He said he thinks that’s a waste, and it would be better to use smaller busses to service more areas of the city.
He would also remove the bike lane at Chilkoot Way, if possible. The bike lane made the lanes for the cars too narrow, he said. “I think I've seen two, maybe three bikes at any given point in time using that, so I find, in my opinion, that was a huge waste of money.”
He’d like to see city funds go towards maintaining roads in a long-term way. He said he sees too many Band-Aid fixes for potholes on Two Mile Hill Road.
“Let's fix it right one time instead of Band-Aiding it over multiple times,” said Smith.
Smith did provide a reference for the News to speak with, but the News was unable to get in contact with the reference by our deadline.
Contact Talar Stockton at talar.stockton@yukon-news.com
