Chadi Abouhalka throws his hat in the ring for Pemberton mayor

The race for Pemberton mayor in next month’s municipal election just got a little tighter, with 15-year Pemberton resident Chadi Abouhalka announcing his candidacy last week.

After more than a decade running a professional painting business in Pemberton, Abouhalka said it's time he put his years of business experience to use making Pemberton a better place for the people who call it home.

“The reason I wanted to run is because in the last, I would say, 15 years, I've seen that some of the things that are essential were not being addressed, and things are taking too long,” he said.

“There's always blame on money and always reasons that things are not moving. And having been in business my entire life, I've come to the conclusion that sometimes you need to think outside the box in order to achieve success. Sometimes it's not that hard. You just have to step back, look around at what's going on, and then address the situation.”

First and foremost on Abouhalka’s platform is safety, followed by housing and environmental sustainability. One of the plans he’d like to accomplish, which hits on all three topics on his platform, has to do with how the village itself is laid out. Abouhalka specifically pointed to the location of the fire hall, noting it is on the wrong side of the train tracks.

Abouhalka’s plan is to relocate the fire hall and Emergency Medical Services base to a more efficient location along a main artery, and to use the current locations for affordable and sustainable housing projects and other amenities.

“Whenever the train goes by, the fire hall cannot be accessed to go to any emergency. So that defeats the purpose," he said. "It should be allocated in a spot that is strategically placed where all emergency medical services can leave from a main artery."

Abouhalka even has a location in mind, which is available, near the highway, and is already set up with enough space for a helicopter pad. In Abouhalka’s plan, the current location of these emergency service buildings could then be used for sustainable, affordable housing—similar to the geothermal-powered Beaver Flats apartment complex in Whistler’s Creekside—that is within walking distance from the town’s amenities.

“So where the ambulance department is, if we can place a building there for senior housing as well as affordable housing, then people are centrally located, which means that at this point, there's no need for people to drive ... that goes out the window, so you reduce the carbon footprint too,” said Abouhalka.

“And then where the fire hall is, why not create, let's say, a microbrewery owned and operated by the municipality, and people can bar hop, or whatever, safely within the community and not have to drive everywhere to get to wherever they're going. And then it's generating an income that will support other things along the way as well.”

If elected, there are many other projects on top of his main emergency services relocation plan that Abouhalka would like to see initiated, including bringing a swimming pool and a hockey rink to Pemberton, and creating a co-op community garden—all of which he believes are possible with a little creativity and outside-the-box thinking in terms of finding the funding to accomplish them.

However, with the rapid growth of the town, Pemberton now faces the challenge of having city-sized needs with just small-town money to work with, a challenge Abouhalka said he is ready to take on.

“There are certain things that need to be properly addressed. And one of them is, ‘why are we spending that much money on certain things that are not really essential when the essentials are right there?’" he said.

"The government actually does lend money for municipalities to be able to buy land at [very low] interest. Why hasn't anyone done that? So if we want to buy land to be able to put EMS services in the right location, and then utilize the space that we have for those other places, those are ways that you can achieve success.”

But putting the ideas and plans and potential projects aside, Abouhalka wants the people of Pemberton know that, from a personal standpoint, he will be someone who listens to the needs of the community if elected, and will always have time to sit down and have a conversation about what direction the residents of Pemberton want to see their community go in.

“I know there's going to be probably a million different questions that are going to be asked," he said. "But we can address those one at a time, take those concerns that people are bringing to the table and look at the ways that we can achieve success and then do that.”