A slate of Delta school board candidates has joined with mayoral candidate Sylvia Bishop’s Team Delta in pledging to keep this civic election civil.
Kids Matter, a slate of school board candidates comprised of incumbent trustee Bruce Reid and newcomers Randy Anderson-Fennell and Victor Espinoza, held a joint press conference with Bishop and her Team Delta slate of council hopefuls this afternoon to endorse and sign on to the latter’s code of ethical conduct.
“A few days ago, the members of Kids Matter contacted me and asked an interesting question: would I mind, they asked, if the Kids Matter slate adopted or endorsed Team Delta’s code of ethical conduct for the duration of the current election campaign? My answer was a swift and succinct yes,” Bishop said.
“So here we are today, Team Delta and Kids Matter, coming together to take the high road as we campaign over the next three months for municipal council and school board.”
READ MORE: Team Delta promises ‘ethical conduct’ in municipal election
The nine-point code of ethical conduct aims to keep the run-up to October’s election civil and focused on the issues by having signatories pledge honesty, integrity, openness, respect for the law, co-operation, selflessness, objectivity, accountability and leadership, all qualities the Kids Matter slate stands for, according to candidate Randy Anderson-Fennell.
“We believe good leaders recognize good ideas, even when those ideas belong to someone else,” he said. “The nine points … are all important and equal qualities that all candidates should follow. We do not expect this campaign to have a negative tone, but we as a group felt it was important to join Team Delta in following these virtues as we continue down the campaign trail.”
Anderson-Fennell went on to say that the code of conduct ought to be adopted by all Delta candidates and carried with them into their term of office.
“As candidates for school trustees, I think it’s so important for us to lead by example and be a positive role [model] for the children of Delta. I hope all candidates during this election follow these nine points.”
When Team Delta’s code of ethical conduct was announced on July 5, Bishop invited the other mayoral candidates and their slates to also sign on. To date, however, that hasn’t happened.
“We did hear back from Independents Working for You. They thanked us very much and re-stated what is already on their website, which talks about how they intend to work. So they chose in essence not to sign on,” Bishop said.
“And the Achieving for Delta group, I got a response from their manager who said they were in receipt of the letter, thank you very much, and it was being forwarded to their mayoral candidate for consideration. And we haven’t heard anything from them [since].”
The election takes place on Saturday, Oct. 20.
(Editor’s note: an earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Bruce Reid’s name as Bill. We sincerely regret the error.)
Visit northdeltareporter.com for a full list of candidates for mayor, council and school board.
