Craig Teichrieb
Running for council in Langley Township
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Firefighter, 44
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• Have you held office in past? If so, please specify: No
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Candidate provided bio: Born and raised in the Lower Mainland, with most of the years spent living in the Langleys, I’ve seen a lot of positive change within Langley, and some change we can learn from.
I want to step forward for the role of councillor to be part of the growth, and help shape the positive. For me this role is about serving the citizens that elect you, listening and advocating for the decisions that are important to them.
As a firefighter, community safety is on the forefront of my interests. The policy of public safety is extremely broad, but the key is to ensure all services are adequate for the communities within the Township.
Being a Brookswood resident, I also have a close interest in the future of the Brookswood-Fernridge community plan. The population growth needs to incorporate changes required to continue to make this the best place to live.
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Facebook: @TeichriebforTownship
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Phone: 604-258-8870
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• Who is your favourite superhero, and why? Spiderman, he’s friendly and can spin a web.
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There are 23 candidates running for eight Langley Township council seats. The following are questions asked of each candidate hopeful. They were directed to provide a minimum of a Yes, No, or Don’t Know answer, and given an option to expand on one answer in print (to a maximum of 100 words per question). They could expand on all questions online, if they wished to do so. The following are their replies.
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Questions and Answers:
1. What neighbourhood of Langley do you live in?
Answer: Brookswood
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2. How many years have you lived in Langley?
Answer: 25 years
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3. How many Langley Township council meetings have you attended in the past year?
Answer: Zero
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4: Should the municipality be directly funding social housing to reduce homelessness?
Answer:No. This should be funded in conjunction with BC Housing and the ministry.
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5. Do you support elevated rail over light rapid transit from Surrey to Langley?
Answer: Yes. In order to lessen the impact on our current road system, elevated rail is the best answer to feeding the current system in the GVRD.
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6. Should the municipality fund an arts centre?
Answer: Yes.
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7. Would you vote to raise taxes to hire more police?
Answer: Yes. If a study suggested that was the best route, based on our current staffing and a crime reduction plan.
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8. Does Langley need a new or second hospital to serve the growing population?
Answer: Don’t know. At the very least, it needs an expansion to keep up with our growing population and ways to attract more physicians to set up practice within our community.
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9. Does Willoughby need its own dedicated library?
Answer: Yes. We need to work towards a centralized community plan for all neighbourhoods with the focus on making them walkable.
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10. Is there enough effort being made to preserve farmland?
Answer: Don’t know. But either way, I support the preservation of our farmland. Once lost we will never get it back.
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11. Should Langley allow construction of residential towers?
Answer: Yes.
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12. Should Langley have its own municipal police force, replacing the RCMP?
Answer: Don’t know. Municipal policing is a wonderful community model of police service, but it comes with a higher cost. The citizens need to be educated and on board with such a drastic change to the current policing model.
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13. Do you think residential property taxes are too high?
Answer: No.
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14. Do you support the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline?
Answer: Don’t know.
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15. Should the municipality offer tax breaks, incentives, or rebates to companies looking to set up shop here?
Answer: Yes.
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16. Is Langley being pushed to grow too fast?
Answer: Yes. I believe in establishing proper roads and infrastructure before housing development. I think we can do better in making sure services and facilities are in place before neighbourhoods become fully occupied.
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17. Do you support redevelopment of Fort Langley’s downtown?
Answer: No.
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18. Should development of Brookswood be phased in?
Answer: Yes. I believe in establishing proper roads and infrastructure, before housing development. There also needs to be support from the community on what the final development will look like. I believe we can do better in making sure services and facilities are in place before neighbourhoods become fully occupied such as expanding on our emergency services, adding recreational facilities and schools.
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19. Should the Township set a deadline to finish widening 208th Street in Willoughby?
Answer: Yes.
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20. Should there be a limit to the number of consecutive terms a member of council can serve?
Answer: No.