Castanet News is getting to know the candidates running in the upcoming Penticton council by-election.

Watch for a new candidate Q&A each morning leading up to the first day of advance voting on March 26.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and brevity.

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Aaron Baisarowicz: Penticton council candidate

Aaron Baisarowicz describes himself as "semi-retired. After working years in a number of jobs in the sales, retail management and corporate management fields, he now works part time at the BC Liquor Store and is ready to join Penticton council.

Castanet: Why are you running to be a city councillor?

Aaron Baisarowicz: I feel like our city council is losing sight on the important things, and they're spending far too much of our time and money and energy on projects that aren't really moving the needle on important measures in this town.

So a lot of things that are important are getting largely ignored, and problems that don't really exist are having creative solutions that nobody asked for being done.

C: What is the most pressing local issue that you as a Penticton councillor would want to address, keeping in mind that City Hall only has so much power?

AB: That's always a tricky question. I really struggle with it, because whenever you say this is the pressing issue in a town, especially since towns are complicated, if you say one thing, then you're largely ignoring subsections of our community.

So if you said housing prices are a problem for some people, then take into account homeless people, that's not an issue. They don't care about property taxes and house prices and things like that. That's far from their issue.

At the same time, if you say homelessness and drug addiction are a big problem, there are other people out there that just can't afford to pay rent and find a house they can live in. They're not that concerned about the homeless and drug addiction problem.

If you're a small business owner and you're susceptible to the issues that are caused by homelessness and drug addiction, then that's probably a much bigger priority. So I don't like to say that any of those issues are significantly one over another.

With that being said, I would say the biggest problem in this community is that City Hall isn't really directing its finances and energy in a meaningful way toward any problem. So our City Hall is basically kind of wasting time and money. That's the biggest problem in our community.

C: If elected, you would be joining council mid-term. What is one example of a time you have agreed with the current council, and one when you disagreed?

Well, I definitely agree with the idea of expanding our winter tourism exposure and setting up light displays and things like that. That's probably my favourite thing the city council has taken involvement in, is making us a bit more of a spectacle over the holiday season. I think it does a lot for the morale in our city, and it draws a lot of people out at that time of year, which is nice.

I mean, we should do a lot more of that throughout the year, to be honest. We need to do something else to attract tourists and families to our town. We can't just base our entire tourism on alcohol consumption, which is kind of what we've done. We turn it into this big wine and craft brewery place. But that can't be the sole driving force of our entire tourist industry. I'd like to see more family-friendly tourist attractions come to our town.

The biggest thing I disagree with, and probably one of the things I struggle the most with, is that we are pouring millions of pounds of concrete, one of the most toxic compounds on the planet. We're building bike paths where they dropped millions of pounds of concrete blocks lining both sides of streets for 6.7 kilometres.

And to me, that is the least green thing I can think of. We create all these barriers in our streets and traffic impediments, like the slalom they've built through South Main there to make it harder to drive our streets. I really struggle with the idea that they do this in the guise of some sort of a green initiative, and it is the least green thing you can do in a city.

The existence of the bike path I don't inherently have a problem with. I don't think it needed to be concrete-lined. I think that paint and maybe some reflective little squares on the ground would have been sufficient.

C: This is a by-election, so roughly a year and a half term is guaranteed before the scheduled fall 2026 election. Is your plan, if elected, to stick around and run again for a full term?

AB: Absolutely yes, and I'm hoping I get elected. But I'm also being realistic. This is my first time entering any sort of political scenario. So I'm not, let's say, well-seasoned as a politician, but I also feel like I understand this town better than many of the people who are running.

I think I have a much better idea of what this community needs to actually go forward and be a stronger, healthier community for everybody. So that's kind of my hope.

That being said, I do know I'm running against some fairly stiff competition, including the gentleman [Jason Reynen] who ran last election that almost won the mayoral position is running against me and I'm not going to lie, I voted for him, I think he's an excellent guy. I think he's an excellent candidate. I'd love to see him win the mayoral seat in the next election.

But it's also great practice for me too. So I get to learn things people want to hear, things people don't want to hear, maybe try to learn to get my point across more succinctly. So it is in part practice, but also in part hope that I can help make the community a little bit stronger.

C: Canada is dealing with a rollercoaster regarding American trade policies. On a local level what, if anything, is Penticton council's role in providing support for local businesses during these uncertain times?

AB: I think that as far as the American tariffs are concerned, I don't think our community is specifically very hard hit by it, because we don't do a lot of manufacturing in tariff products across the border. So I think the best thing we could do is probably not have our provincial government institute a large number of tariffs on our citizens, so we're basically paying out of punishment for American tariffs, and that's completely unfair.

I think we need to stop creating this trade war out of spite and actually just try to find a way to work within our community to make sure we are more self-supportive than we are right now, perhaps that means we spend a little less time importing produce and focus on things that we can generate in our community, more time supporting our local farms.

The other thing I really think we need to do, unfortunately, it's outside of the scope of the city council, is we need to get rid of our interprovincial trade barriers so that we could actually sell wine across the country without massive issues. That's probably the one thing that hurts more than anything else. But unfortunately, it is definitely more of a provincial issue than a municipal issue, for sure.

C: This election is to fill one available seat on council, previously held by now-MLA Amelia Boultbee, but a second seat sits empty at meetings.

Coun. James Miller has been on mandatory leave from his council duties since August while facing historical criminal charges. He retains his council seat in name and collects his city salary, as per the Local Government Act.

In your opinion should Coun. Miller resign while he deals with his personal situation?

AB: Absolutely. Even in my initial preliminary meeting for council candidates, they said, that if you miss more than four of your council meetings, you can be dismissed from your position. So if he chooses not to step down and continue to draw a taxpayer salary, I feel like the city council should have stepped in and said, if you're going to miss more than four then you have to step down. Period. That's in the books, that is a written law in our municipal government, they should be adhering to that instead of allowing him to continue to draw taxpayer funds.*

C: Pie-in-the-sky question: If the city had $1 million of free money to spend on anything, how would you want to see it spent?

AB: It's a tough question because one million dollars doesn't go as far as you'd like it to. I'm not a big fan of squandering money, I'd like to see the city just generally be more fiscally responsible. But if it was just free money to be spent on anything, I think we should create a better outdoor green space for recreational walking and things like that.

This town is really struggling with that. Since I was a child, we've lost almost all of the green space in the town, where you can go and walk anywhere. We've got paths like the Channel Parkway, but there are no trees, it's just an exposed path along the highway. We've got a short little path along the road.

Many communities, let's say, for example, Abbotsford, have a beautiful walk around a pond called Mill Lake in the middle of town. Many small towns have these walks.

We have developed it all completely out of our community, where you literally have to drive a half hour or more to find a nice area to walk. So probably the best option we would have there is, I'd like to see that million dollars get spent on Ellis Creek, to make that a more accessible and more nature-oriented path for people to use on a regular basis, because it has proven that being in nature really helps people's peace of mind.

*Editor's Note: James Miller is on mandatory paid leave as per provincial laws. Council and the city have no power to dismiss a councillor who is on BC Local Government Act mandated leave while facing criminal charges.

Advance voting days are March 26 and 27. General voting day is April 5.