Election Season is Here.

Some thoughts.

I feel like I was just writing my “2026 has arrived” newsletter, then I blinked, and the year is over halfway complete. I’m told this is a phenomenon mostly explained by getting older but it also feels like I hit a time slipstream sometime around March 2020…

Anyways.

This week is BUZZING with press releases of City Councillors announcing their intentions for the big seat, and a wave of social media posts from dusty Facebook accounts that have been dormant for 4 years suddenly awakening to share issues and event attendances.

I’ve got some content planned for the election cycle, but I wanted to start by laying out my own framework for evaluating these candidates, making a few disclosures, and asking how North of Somewhere should cover the next 70-odd days.

The Issues

Skimming the comments of Sampson’s Facebook announcement, and just generally keeping my eyes on the Prince George subreddit posts about the election, it feels to me like the noisy online public has two major issues they’re going to be looking at:

Taxes/Affordability.
Downtown (safety/homelessness, and business development).

I don’t know if you are familiar with the shocked Pikachu face meme, but look it up and you can get a sense of my own reaction to these being the issues floating to the surface.

This is a CBC article from 2022.

I’m certain I could have ChatGPT spit out a few more articles proving my point here but I hope we can agree that ever-rising taxes, visible homelessness and disorder downtown, concerns about crime and safety, and the perennial question of “where do our tax dollars go?” are not unique to the political moment of 2026.

Now just because these issues have probably been the central issues of municipal elections for over a decade does not mean we should discount them.

I’ve said all of this before many times in many newsletters: people are allowed to be frustrated by their tax bill. Business owners and residents are allowed to be angry about what has happened downtown. We see monstrous tax increases year over year with services being cut, not expanded.

For me, it’s not the issues I’m exhausted by - it’s the same mostly useless, platitude-sounding solutions that appear on the table every cycle.

“Accountability from City Hall.” “Freeze the tax hikes.” “Clean up downtown.” “Fire the managers!” “A city that works for its residents!” “Bold leadership!”

Some of these misunderstand how municipal government actually works aswe cannot simply elect a mayor who starts personally firing department managers…

Some of these are empty platitudes that mean nothing (HOW do we clean up downtown legally), and many of these are impossible (you cannot freeze tax hikes without absolutely massacring the city budget).

I could keep rattling on about issues but let’s talk about a solution for a second.

I’m (almost) a single issue voter

A year ago, I made a video about the sprawl problem in Prince George:

If you need a basic refresher of the video, it’s just making the case that Prince George’s land size is way too big for its population and the decaying infrastructure that supports that sprawling land is too expensive to maintain. Our city keeps taking on sprawling developments to pay for it which initially helps, but kind of like a payday loan, eventually costs more than it pays.

New subdivisions do add taxpayers, but they also add kilometres of roads, pipes, sidewalks, snow-clearing routes and emergency-service obligations. The development charges and early tax revenue look good upfront but, as the video explains, it shackles us to a Ponzi scheme-style growth that we cannot run from.

Every candidate who fails to mention this (to me) is completely unserious about the tax burden of Prince George. They can make promises, and maybe they will have other good policy/rhetoric that I like but not coming out as anti-sprawl while also trying to be an “anti-tax hike” candidate - sorry pal, I ain’t believin’ ya.

An expanded problem for a lot of these candidates is many have a VERY long tenure on Council to explain. Mayoral candidates Sampson (2 terms), Frizzel (5 terms), and Yu (1 term), alongside the returners for Council should be held to their decisions that continued expanding Prince George’s developed footprint and approving new subdivisions at the city’s edge.

I will also say that (and please know how much it pains me to say this) but now would be a good time to share that video to a friend or two to help bolster the public awareness of sprawl.

Downtown

The reason I say “almost” is that I’ve also spent nearly 3 years writing on this platform about downtown and so while I think ending our sprawl and making strong density commitments about Prince George’s future are important, I should also acknowledge I will be watching the rhetoric around downtown closely.

Let me say this: the past 4 years have been brutal on our downtown.

Structure fires and, I can’t believe I have to use this word, explosions have done equal parts visible damage but also morale damage with examples like Crossroads and the former Achilleon. Business closures ranging from The Makerie, and North City Donair to Birch and Boar combined with business departures like Homespun Refillery choosing to leave the downtown core.

Overlapping that is an increase in visible homelessness and drug use, vandalism, and smaller scale (but equally threatening) arson and fire (causing the temporary closure of businesses like Zoe’s and the permanent relocation of Hometown Prints).

We have giant red signs that remind patrons of downtown that they’re in a SECURITY ZONE (which has clearly done a lot, great job folks), and we continue to concede human spaces to cars (ie paving over a former park to be a parking lot).

Oh, and it looks like we might be able to revisit the public bathroom discussion in another 4-8 years.

On the upside of downtown development, it’s worth mentioning that the last 4 years have not all been losses and concessions. We’ve seen:

• Hotel, and housing additions and expansions along the South East edge of downtown.

• The Tourism PG Visitor Info Centre relocating to the Civic Centre and their development of the plaza.

• Additions of supportive and subsidized housing along 1st.

• Farmers Market Saturdays have expanded, and been joined by other great downtown events.

• Beloved business additions such as Wall of Fame, Daydream Donuts and Ivy’s.

• “Luxury” apartments and condos near City Hall.

Downtown will be one of the clearest signals of how these candidates actually think about the city.

• Can they show real empathy for people experiencing homelessness without dismissing the legitimate harm being experienced by businesses, workers and downtown residents?

• Are they able to do more than speak in platitudes about the path forward?

• Is it crazy to ask if we can see bold, specific proposals around pedestrian streets, public spaces, vacant buildings, housing, sanitation and downtown transportation?

• How do we handle the abundance of derelict/empty buildings in our main corridors?

Similar to the above, the candidates who have sat on M&C for some time will have some serious answering to do and (in my opinion) the longer these folks have served - the more questions I have about their seriousness on this issue.

So all of this is to say - my election “coverage” is not going to spend much time asking whether candidates agree that taxes are high or downtown is struggling. Nearly everyone agrees on the diagnosis.

I’m interested in whether they understand why these problems persist, what powers they feel like our Mayor and Council actually has, and whether their proposed solutions survive contact with both the law and reality.

I’ve also got a lot to say about the AI-ification of local political platforms that we’re about to endure but that’s its own entire newsletter.

Disclosures and personal relationships

I mentioned this in an earlier newsletter but I’m trying to be better about disclosing my personal/business relationships and though I feel committed to not letting them twist my writing, I think it’s still good faith to make sure they’re spoken into the public record here, and I’ll keep doing reminders when it feels relevant.

First and foremost, I should certainly mention a couple of the campaigns have tapped my business for photography and videography. This is ordinary paid contract work: none of it is donated or discounted, however it still means I have a financial relationship with those campaigns. I’ll identify the candidates once that work has been released publicly.

Also, I’ve mentioned this many times over but I’ve had regular chats over coffee and lunch with numerous Councillors, and would say I consider Tim, Cori, and Kyle pretty good friends of me the person, and friends of the newsletter. I think all 3 of them would say it doesn’t exempt them from receiving some scathing texts and phone calls, or being brought up in the newsletter (if anything, it amplifies their accountability) when I feel like they’re pushing against the core principles of North of Somewhere.

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Before I end this thing, I also want to know what would actually be useful to readers. What questions do you want candidates to answer? Which votes or issues deserve a closer look?

That’s it for this week. The dormant Facebook accounts are waking up, the press releases are flowing, and I suspect we’re about to have a very long 70 days.

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