Castlegar City Councillor Florio Vassilikakis is hoping to serve another term. He’s been a councillor for the past five years and describes himself as very focused on data driven decisions.
“As we look towards the future, I believe that I’m in the place where I am because I can appreciate and I take responsibility on tough decisions. And it think at the end of the day people respect that about me, that I can cut out the noise sometimes and make the decisions that are difficult for the future sustainability of our community.”
He says he knows that in the past citizens haven’t always been engaged in what’s happening, but feels there’s been good progress on that in the past couple years.
“A couple of the projects that we’ve done, Columbia Avenue, even the entire process for the recreation expansion through the Regional District was done with public engagement at the core of the process.”
He says there’s still work to be done with the Complex expansion and that there’s a lot of ways to continue to engage the public and come to a consensus. Vassilakakis says economic development is very important which has benefits on a broader scale for example in attracting doctors. He says parks, recreation, airport reliability and infrastructure improvements will attract more businesses, developers, new residents and skilled labourers.
Vassilikakis is a business owner having moved here in 2002 and is now raising three young kids with his wife.
