By ROY WOOD
Approaching 20 years since he was first elected to Oliver council, Mayor Ron Hovanes shows little sign of slowing down, and, in fact, still seems to harbour his dream of even higher office.
He was elected to council in 1999 and again in 2002. He captured the mayor’s chair in 2005 then took the 2008 to 2011 term off to try for the provincial Liberal nomination, losing to John Slater. He breezed back into the mayor’s chair in 2011and has been there since.
Hovanes will be barely 60 in 2021, a scheduled provincial election year. His ambitions along that line are where we started a year-ender interview earlier this week. (The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)
Oliver Daily News: I know the position isn’t vacant and Linda Larson is running for the Liberals in May, but do you still want to be an MLA?
Mayor Ron Hovanes: I wholly support Linda. But I never say no.
Its’ such a weighty decision. Our own personal business is doing well. But even being in the mayor’s chair takes me away from it so much that (my wife) Tara ends up doing a whack of the work.
It’s a big decision down the road and I’d have to see if people wanted me, and things like that. I’d never say never, but it’s not something I’m actively campaigning for.
ODN: Will you run again for mayor in 2018?
Hovanes: Halfway through the term, I’m really enjoying the mayor’s role. This has been a great term.
I’ve got a great council. It’s a good time to be part of council and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a little bit too early to say I’m running again but I’m not telling you that I’m not running.
ODN: Is a successor emerging?
Hovanes: I’ve got good people on council.
Of course you have no control over the electorate, but when you take on something like this, you really would like to turn it over to someone solid.
The UBCM offers a leadership academy a couple of times year. I’ve attended quite a few of these training exercises and they are really great. And this year I’m being joined by Councillors (Larry) Schwartzenberger and (Petra) Veintimilla. So they are very engaged and want to help the community and they are willing to learn.
ODN: What have been some of the year’s highlights?
Hovanes: I feel there is a really positive feel about our community right now. It’s been building up to this moment. A lot of stuff is happening.
Along with new corrections facility and 300 jobs that will create, there’s been so much other a stuff happening, too. There’s a little bit of an economic boost happening. There are two new housing developments, (Oliver Landing and the Meadows) which we haven’t had in decades.
Downtown Oliver is more alive. Gecko moving into the restaurant space and three other new businesses that seem to be going very well. You drive down Main Street in the late afternoon or early evening you find yourself looking for parking. It’s a nice predicament to have.
We’ve got a ton of people moving into the community and I seem to bump into them all the time.
People traditionally came here to retire. But now people are coming here to work. And then we have people returning home. People who were born and raised in Oliver, went off and had their careers and they’re coming back and calling Oliver home again.
ODN: What’s the attraction?
Hovanes: What I’m hearing from a lot of them is that one of the greatest qualities we have is that we are an authentic farming community.
We’re not that big. We’re not a boom and bust community. We’re just very solid. I like to tell people we’re a settled community where your neighborhood stays the same year round.
School registrations have gone up so our schools are fairly healthy. I think we can thank corrections for that and we can thank everything else that goes along with corrections.
People are really discovering Oliver. Some of the events we have, like the Half-corked Marathon, which was nominated as one of the top tourist events in the country, and the Festival of the Grape. And all the other things that we, as a community, deliver to our own public and the visiting public have really shared our area with a much broader audience.
People know where Oliver is today. Ten years ago if you were traveling and said you were from Oliver in the South Okanagan people would start asking what that’s close to. But people know where we are now.
There are a lot of things going on.
Of course we started off the year with the catastrophic event at the irrigation canal. And that’s not over yet. It affects well over 400 farmers and all the other wineries and things and all the rural residents who depend on it for their agricultural and outside water.
That’s the main priority on our plate at the moment. We are looking for a permanent fix. But we’ve had good news there, too, partnering with the province.
ODN: What will be he impact of losing the CFO?
Hovanes: Chief administrative officer Cathy Cowan was off for an extended period and so it hasn’t been great year. But she’s back and Cathy is phenomenal. She has great respect from council and I believe that’s shared with her peers as well.
And now we’re losing chief financial officer David Svetlichny. He has a young family and his wife has a practice in Penticton.
We had him for almost six years and in the management world of civic government that’s not too bad. It was only a matter of time before he would stretch his wings and pursue his career (in a larger centre). We are recruiting now.
Dave has promised to come back in the spring to help with the transition. There are good candidates and I believe they’ll find Oliver in the South Okanagan to be an attractive place.
ODN: What has been your biggest disappointment of the year?
Hovanes: I work very hard not to focus on negatives. I try to be self-disciplined to where I don’t let negatives bring me down, even when I have cranky individuals who want to come in and spend half an afternoon with me because they’re upset about something. There usually is some resolution at the end of the day. But sometimes there isn’t.
I’ve done this long enough to know that the biggest mistake you can make in local government or any kind of politics, is to try please everybody. Because honestly, every time you make a decision there’s going to be somebody who’s not happy.
So, there are no real negatives, but we have to deal with some issues. We had a lot of press about bylaw enforcement this summer. But the issues we went through are personnel issues and so I can’t talk about them.
Council really wants to have a bylaw enforcement contractor who sets the tone you want for the community. There has to be a fit there. It’s very organic, we hope we can get through that hiccup and keep on going.
But, it’s not something that brings me down. It’s part of the job. Not everything that comes across our table is sunny and rosy. We have to deal with tough issues sometimes and quite often they are the personnel issues.
ODN: Are there contentious issues among councillors?
Hovanes: Not really. We’re doing well as a group.
I had my council over for dinner the other day and the spirit there was incredible. My perception is that they are having a pretty good time.
ODN: What is the effect of having the camera back broadcasting council meetings?
Hovanes: There’s no difference in the decision making process. I don’t think people really act up for the camera.
I kind of like it when I know people are watching. Part of my big push with Eastlink is that there are a lot of people, particularly at this time of year, who aren’t going to get out of the house. And we have a large senior population.
I wear a jacket and tie to all of my public meetings. I do it because I think I should wear the uniform and set the tone of the role. When we were being televised, if I didn’t wear a tie on camera I’d hear about it from somebody.
ODN: You were recently appointed to the Okanagan Basin Water Board, which a bit different approach to water conservation than Oliver.
Hovanes: In 2015 the province said we were in a stage-four drought in the entire province. So immediately people were bringing in water restrictions and their drought management plans. But we had never gone down that road
The OBWB took its lead from the province that year: that we’re going to hell in a hand basket right across the board.
We decided we should have a plan, so we are not doing it willy-nilly or knee-jerk, so let’s do it in the proper way. But that process got hijacked by our canal this year.
We put in water meters several years ago as part of a very comprehensive water management plan. Even then I had MLAs telling me, “You’ve got lots of water, you don’t need meters.” But we felt it was the right thing to do.
Our community today has some of the best water and sewer practices in the country. One hundred per cent of our sewer water is reclaimed. Not only do we grow hay on the airfield and collect some money there. Our two linear parks are fed by reclaimed water along with the high school grounds and the cemetery grounds. And the biggest user is the Fairview Mountain Golf Course.
People should give us credit for what we do already.
ODN: Anything you’d like to add?
Hovanes: We’ve never had a real boom and bust atmosphere here in Oliver. We’ve always had this steady growth.
When 2008 came, our economy didn’t fair as badly as some others.
And now we are in very, very positive times.
There’s the Area 27 (race track) and Mount Baldy that we haven’t even talked about. There are a lot of irons in the fire. We’ve got the hospital and a brand new high school.
I’m really looking forward for the next couple of years.