Photo submitted by Darrell Bastarache.
Saint John now has three candidates vying to become the city’s next mayor.
Darrell Bastarache has thrown his name into the ring to become the successor to outgoing mayor Don Darling.
Bastarache says as a lifelong Saint Johner, he’s happy with some of the recent achievements from the current council, but he feels more effort needs to be put toward improving small business growth.
“I appreciate the progress we have, I love the buildings that are going up,” he said. “I love the fact Steve Brittain is willing to spend his money, and build large projects to make our city good. Any progress is good, however, I want progress that every citizen of Saint John can feel.”
He says he wants to see more ‘access’ for people who want to start a small business.
“We need to make our city attractive again, to want businesses to have a sense of security, large or small, to come into our city,” Bastarache said. “Primarily, we need small business in the uptown core. We need to focus on that, as many small businesses as we could take in would help in the growth of our economy.”
Bastarache says he has spoken to several business owners and developers who feel it takes too long to get things done.
One area where the mayoral hopeful would like to see improvement is ‘transparency’ in politics.
“I’m finding the issue is they’re only letting what they want to let out, and their idea of transparency is not really explaining what’s really going on – for instance, closed door meetings and things that I’ve heard about taking place,” Bastarache said.
When asked for details on who was not being transparent, or what kind of issues were being discussed at the closed-door meetings, Bastarache did not provide specifics.
With the municipal election set for May 10, candidates now have just two months to win over voters.
Bastarache says though this is his first time running he has spoken to several politicians over the years and has been considering a run for a while, finally deciding this year was the right time.
“I’m not going to say becoming the mayor of Saint John is going to be an easy job or it’s going to be simple, but I tell you I’m going to enjoy the challenge.”
