Kenny Schultze

David Guthrow interviews Kenny Schultz, a first-time candidate in the West Van municipal election. Schultz decided to run for council due to his interest in city planning and the lack of housing choices in the community. He also became aware of traffic issues and the need for climate resilience. During his campaign, Schultz enjoyed talking to people and listening to their perspectives, which helped him tailor his policies to be more inclusive. He also encountered different needs within the same household, such as a focus on electric cars from the mother and a desire for bike lanes and better transit from the son. Schultz also had positive interactions with high school students who wanted safer spaces for their electric scooters. He acknowledges the challenge of engaging young people in the voting process, especially without party affiliations in local elections. He suggests that clear branding and understanding where candidates stand could help increase voter engagement. Hello, hi, I'm David Guthrow and I'm here with Kenny Schultz and the reason for doing this interview is because I was quite dismayed at the way our municipal election went here in West Van and I thought it would be really helpful to talk to someone who is a first time candidate to get their experience and their advice for other people that choose to run next year because I think there's really a need to have good people run and I wouldn't want them turned off by the experience that others have had. So can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Yeah, well thanks for having me David, I'm really looking forward to sharing my experience as a young person running for public office. And so my background, so I grew up in West Van, over in Eagle Harbor and I went to Eagle Harbor Primary School, Caulfield Elementary, Rockridge and then I did my Bachelor of Commerce with Honours at UBC where I majored in Operations and Logistics with a concentration in Business Law. And during my time as well as a student, I was training as an elite track and field athlete and so I've competed in the 110 metre hurdles and 400 metre hurdles and so that was a really awesome experience as well of dedication, how to work as an individual but also on a team and how to be really coachable and take feedback and truly listen. And then currently, so I graduated into COVID pandemic, so all of my work opportunities fell through and currently I'm managing the fish market up at Caulfield Village, which has been a fantastic experience of actually learning how a small business works and how to actually connect and talk to people too. So you're a pretty busy guy and what are some of the factors that, and relatively young for people that run for office in my experience. So what are some of the factors that led to your decision to run for council here? Yeah, so during my time at UBC, I learned that, I took some courses in city sociology and I just started watching a lot of TED Talks about city planning and kind of the urban environment and it was so interesting and I just wanted to continue learning more and more and what I realized during my time at UBC was obviously my specialization was not necessarily conducive to working in that field. And so I, after graduating, I was networking and trying to learn more about land use in general, both public side and the private side. And then I ended up connecting with Marianne Booth, the former mayor of West Van. And just to learn, it was more, I was coming from a city planning perspective, but it kind of turned into the politics aspect as well, where how do you actually, how do you work with the public, how do you connect with people to get their feedback and kind of create a decision that, or policy that really will have a long-term benefit to the community. So at that time, you hadn't actually decided to run for council? No, no, this was just purely learning. And then I was just, I was curious until I started attending council meetings and I was also thinking, you know, I was like, one of the big things that ultimately made me decide to run was housing choice, lack of housing choices in West Van, because my mom grew up here in West Van. My grandparents moved here in the fifties, Ken and Helen Campbell, as teachers. And so they were able to afford, they could get by as teachers living in West Vancouver. And that's where my perspective came from was, you know, that's a common story for so many families in West Van, where you have young people and older people from the same family in the same community. And there's just no choices now. There's no spaces for young families to be able to come back. And there's no spaces for people to downsize, but also stay in the neighbourhood too. Not everyone wants to have to feel like they have to move away if they want to start living in a bit of a smaller space or a more manageable space. Cool. So you stepped up to address that challenge? I did. I did. And after that, you know, I learned about all the traffic issues that we're facing and also the climate emergency and how we're not climate resilient at all with our infrastructure. And so it was kind of putting some insight saying, hey, this is really important because, you know, it's economically unsustainable if we're not planning for future weather events. And one of the things that I found sort of a transition, you know, initially you started to just focus on housing and you talked about all these others as well. And I think seeing the connections between them, I think there's a lot of people that are what issue candidates and that's all they focus on, when in fact, it's a very complex environment in any municipal government that has to be dealt with. And it's very easy to judge someone because they're not representing your particular point of view on a singular issue, but fail to realize that it's all got to work together for the community. So, okay. So you started campaigning. Yeah. I'm curious, what are some of the things that you enjoyed most about this? What were some of the positive moments in your campaign? I would honestly say it was just actually talking with people and just listening. Because you get a little glimpse of their life as an individual, which I find so fascinating because it can change your perspective on a certain issue, just that little bit that gives you a bit more insight to really tailor the policy or what you believe in for the community to make it more inclusive of everyone's needs. And so it's having that empathy built into listening. And so that's one of my favorite parts was actually really just talking with people. Door knocking was really fun. I love the all candidates. I thought they were super fun. And having that conversational aspect, I quite enjoy. Well, and you spoke just before we started this recording about a particular event where you had two people from the same family. You really had quite different perspectives. Yeah. So I was at a local coffee shop and one of my customers, I recognized her, I wanted to say hello. And she came up and said hi, and she was having a meal with her son. And so he said, oh, come on, sit down with us, I said, sure. And so what was really fascinating was the different needs from people in the same household. So the mother, she's, I would say, probably close to my parents' age, mid to late 50s. And then her son is about my age. And mom was really focused on her electric car, so a single occupancy vehicle. Electric cars are the solution for gas powered cars, I will say that. But she was wanting more charging stations, more road space for her car specifically. But then talking with her son, it was about bike lanes. It was about better transit. It was about expanding choices for people so they don't have to only travel in their car. But it was just really interesting seeing that dichotomy right in front of me, from the same household. And you could see that there was not a disconnect, but just the different needs from those two individuals. I can imagine their dinnertime conversation about that. Like, what? You never said that to me before, are you crazy? Yeah. Is that what you're saying? And what were some other positive moments in the campaign? Another really positive one, when I was putting up my signs with my younger brother, it was, I think it was like 7 o'clock on, I don't know, like a Thursday or a Friday. So there was some high school kids buzzing around. And as we were putting some up, a group of about six of them kind of stopped and said, who signs this? And we were like, oh, it's mine. And they're like, oh my God, that's so cool. You're like, not old. And I said, I know, I'm 25. And they got super pumped. And I asked them, like, what do you guys want to see? And they were ripping around on their electric scooters. And they were saying, we want to be able to travel on these, we're not going to get hit. And so it was the need for safer spaces for them to be able to go on their scooters, to have better mobility choices. And it was just nice to engage with other young people, because I don't know if anyone's actually talked to, like high school students, for example. Well, so on that, like I went to a number of all candidates meetings, I would say that most people, I'd say 90% of them were between two and a half to three times older than you are. Right. And they have a particular perspective on things. I'm sure they have their own issues, and they're open-minded and things like that. But how do you get young people, and you know, young, even say like 20 to 40 would be considered young for most of the groups I've been to, how do you get them to pay attention to voting? I mean, it's a right that we have, it's a privilege, actually, that people don't take advantage of, to both take the fact that they can vote seriously, but also to get to understand the candidates, what they're standing for. Do you have any ideas on how to engage them? I think one of the challenging things locally is that there is, there are no parties. So there isn't, it's not like the federal government or the provincial government, where you know, you see liberal, you get the general idea, you see conservative, you get the general idea. But in West Van, without parties, you don't really know where people stand, just from a quick understanding. And so I think like that's where, you know, some of the parties like in the city of Vancouver did quite well. I think ABC did quite a good job of branding themselves, you knew exactly where they stood, you knew exactly what their kind of, the general flavor of what they would represent. And so it just made it easy for people to clue in and engage. But in terms of also getting other, more people to get out and vote, that's a tough one. Just because there were so many opportunities to go on advance polls, like we had advance polls on Thanksgiving long weekend, open on staff holiday. And so I thought there would be even more turnout. I mean, the turnout was pretty good for the advance polls, but the overall turnout was only 35%, which was worse than the last election, which was already low. I mean, we did better than I believe the city of Vancouver, North Vancouver, but it was still a low turnout. And it's, it is challenging. I think, I think it is because there's so many people you have to choose. And that was having no parties, you just don't know, you can't get to know six people or that's more than six, you have to get to know 17 different people for council, that's four different mayoral candidates. And then the seven other school board trustee candidates, that's almost 30 people you have to know. And that's too much. So this is one of the things I'm curious about, I know that one of the folks running for mayor talked about, I heard the term slate and then I heard the term coalition. And what's the difference between those two? Because it's not exactly like parties, but that might've been confusing for some people. That's a good question, because it's not technically a party, because a slate would be more of like the like-minded individuals. And so when you do hit your wagon to someone, it lets people already automatically know kind of where you would stand as a new person, if you're with someone that has more name recognition. And so I think that this might've been the start of party politics in West Van, because it almost seemed like it was, at least there might've been a couple of parties almost. And so I think that's what really let people have an opportunity to engage well. And so, but going back to your actual question of what's the difference, quite frankly, I don't know. Semantic differential that no one knows about or understands. Yeah, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And so it's just actually going to what are the exact rules outlined by Elections BC for party and that's having the cost sharing aspect of it. That's where, it boils down to the money. So you all shared your own costs in your, I'm sorry. So if you're a party, you do share your costs from that electoral party. Right. But if you're an individual like myself, like I wasn't independent, but I did run alongside with Marianne as like-minded individuals and we didn't do any cost sharing. All of my costs were done on my own independently. I didn't, that's just what I did because that's what the rules were. Okay, fair. Yeah. So now I also know that, what are some things that surprised you that you went into running in this election? And things that you kind of went, never would have guessed that would happen. Any surprises that come to mind? And I'll also maybe tie into the next question as well. What disappointed you most about the campaign? What are some of the things that happened that you kind of went, oh, never would have thought that would have happened? What I'm disappointed about was- And the names. Oh yeah. What I was most disappointed about was the automatic assumption that because I'm young, I'm inexperienced and uneducated, which I think is grossly unfair because that is ageist. Ageism goes in two ways. And I'm just disappointed that once I actually, what I did like though in terms of positive was once I actually was able to connect and actually have a good conversation and both of us were actively listening to one another, they started to realize, oh, you actually know the facts. You talk in real numbers. Like when talking about affordability, I'll talk in real numbers. And they start to realize, oh, you actually know a lot more than I thought. And so it's having to work past that, which was really disappointing, but an unsurprising thing. But I wouldn't really say anything really super surprised me during this campaign. I knew it was going to be a bit of a gong show, that high intensity activity, I'll call it. And yeah, I wasn't super surprised by kind of how things unfolded personally, sadly. And so I know that some things happened. Some people spoke to you that I heard about and I thought that is so inappropriate. Are you comfortable sharing some of those? You know, well, it's one of those things where in the moment I was definitely disappointed because I felt like I was being a little bit intimidated because I am young. And so it's something where I've just recognized that it has happened. And I will acknowledge that and I know who was involved. And this is something to keep in mind, but it didn't really faze me too much because I wouldn't change. Anything that I've done, I wouldn't change. Well, and one of the reasons, one of the things I wonder about, because you're young, you're inexperienced. If someone, and there were some older candidates, I mean, everyone else is older, if they would have been subject to the same sort of thing, I just wonder how much is because you were either A, young or B, inexperienced. So I don't know the answer to that. It's hard to say. I think it might have manifested itself differently and might not have been as upfront or explicit. It might've been a bit more subtle and with a bit more nuance to it. So that's the only thing I could think possibly, because I am young and there were concerns and I had concerns too. You know, I am young and I don't want to feel like I'm being persuaded or manipulated by any party, you know, and staying true to myself. That's where I had my own personal, I call it my landing pad, my key values of honesty, integrity, and compassion. And so that's something I always fell back on is if I was feeling uncertain about a certain scenario or kind of situation that happened, I thought, you know, was I acting with integrity? Yes. If I was acting honestly? Yes. Was I acting with compassion? Yes. So as long as I felt like I was in line with those personal values that I set out, I'm content. You can look in the mirror and feel good about what you did. Exactly. Yeah. So if you were going to run again, which I hope you do, quite frankly, what have you learned this time? What would you do differently next time? Spend more money. Spend more money? Spend more money. By running what? Well, just ads. I ran a really lean campaign, a very lean campaign. I just had some handouts, my signs, one ad in the North Shore News, and that was pretty much it. And then, so that's all the paid advertising I did. So I didn't do any mail drops, I didn't do many ads online or anything like that. And so I think just getting my name out there even more and more where people would just see the name, you know. And then also, I would probably, I mean hindsight's 20-20 and recognizing that at the time before the campaign, I didn't have much opportunity to get involved with committees and whatnot. So what I'm going to be doing going forward is continuing to build the relationships that I've started, but also apply for some committees and try to get on some volunteer groups. So one of the things that I sometimes get concerned about around the money kind of thing, is some people spend a lot of money on signs and drops and things like that, and it creates either an intentional or an unintentional bias, this person must be more successful because they could afford more to advertise more. And I think our biases get formed very, very quickly by things like that, that maybe not have been intended to do that, but the optics tell us certain things like, oh, look how big that sign is, wow, he or she must be really, really successful, or look at how many signs they have. And to me, and I'm curious about what would happen if candidates were only allowed to have either so many signs or so many square footage of signs. Hard to actually- It's hard to regulate it. Hard to regulate that. And enforce. But it's just like, it's crazy. It's like sign works. And I think people just, I'll speak for myself, like I'm really tired of it. CISA places with like 20 signs, and first of all, it's a visual distraction. I think I'll just have an accident here, so I'm going to check- Well, it's like the top of Taylor Way, it was just like a wall, and it was, oh my God. But it's one of those things, like there is a trade-off, and as someone that was a new person into the scene, and as a young person, it was so important for me to get my signs out across the community within the first 24 hours of the campaign. That was what I was really dedicated to doing, because I knew that once other signs are up, my signs are going to get, they're going to be less visible, just because there's so much more noise. But if we reduce the amount of sign space that is available, the pros are, there's less eyesore, there's better for safety. The cons are, it does disadvantage new people, especially people that don't have the same name recognition like Sager or Booth, for example, two very high profile individuals in our community. But as a new person, where people don't know necessarily who I am, if it's only in a couple of pockets where you can see it, I'm not going to have that same brand awareness. Yeah, no, very good point. So what are the realities of running for candidate for council or province, or that's going to be the same sort of thing? So last question then, Kenny, is what advice would you give to someone, to aspiring young candidates, that what things should they think about before they decide to run? And if they do decide to run, what's some of your best advice based on your own experience? And this could be at any level of government. Yeah. I think, you know, it's attend meetings and actually listen to the facts, read the reports. So you're talking about like council meetings? I would say, yeah, if you're wanting to run locally, attend the council meetings, read the reports for a good chunk of time. I was attending them for over a year, and I read almost every report as well for over a year, because I wanted to know that I had the facts, I understood the issues entirely, and it was a very important thing to be informed, because I knew people would be looking for ways to discount me as a candidate by being, he's too young, he doesn't know what he's talking about. So it's important to recognize that. It's also, I think, really important, especially locally and for Metro Vancouver, to recognize how far we've come in almost one lifetime. It's like my grandfather grew up in East Van with duck farms over on 10th Street. There's no more duck farms in East Van, let me tell you. And then even when my parents were, you know, as young adults, there was not much development on the waterfront in downtown Vancouver. False Creek wasn't a thing. It's really important that young people have that empathy and understand where we've come from in a relatively short period of time. But it's also important for older people to recognize the needs of younger people, too. So it's having a two-way empathy and compassion. So I would say those two, so know where you come from, be informed, very informed, and then also have a good attitude. You know, it's stay positive. One of the biggest feedback I got was, how do you stay so positive? And it's just one of those things where you just gotta. There's no secrets there you can share? I think we can all use that. It's always about being, when talking about climate, when talking about housing, when talking about transportation, any of these kind of crises we're facing, things are dire, but it's not hopeless. And that's something I always try to kind of cling on to, even when I have my pessimistic spurts, is just to remember it's not hopeless. We have to stay inspired. We have to continue to look to the future and be a collective good neighbor to each other. Well, I personally really appreciate the fact that you ran the first time, and even more so, because some people, when they lose, you never see them again, never hear from them again. You know, I did it once. But it sounds like you really invest and continue to build the community. So the fact you're thinking already about what you need to do, how you can contribute now to be in a better position when you run again, just looking for a head nod. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, yeah. What's made me, you know, make me feel continued to be inspired is the feedback I've gotten from people. And there's people are coming, like coming into the fish market saying, Oh my God, you did so well. That was amazing. Like, please stay engaged. Please continue to at least help shape the community, even not as a counselor, but even just locally with volunteer groups, just continue to stay engaged because they feel inspired. And it just feels reassuring for me, which I really, really appreciate. Because at the end of the day, it's not about me. It's about West Van, and it's about everybody that lives here. Well, if everyone felt the same way, that'd be awesome. So, you know, the folks that I hope listen to this are younger people like yourself that are considering, should I run or should I not? And for older people to see the value in getting some younger voices in there, well-informed younger voices, the ones that have been in the business community and things like that. So thank you very much. Thank you, David. For taking your time. And I look forward to hearing more of you over the next four, 12, 15 years. See what happens. Yeah. Lots of time to come. So yeah, hopefully we can chat again soon. Sounds good. Awesome. Thanks. Okay.