Ward 4 Coun. Lori Bresciani announces bid for Regina mayor

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Two-term city councillor Lori Bresciani hopes to exchange one hat for another by making a run for the city’s top spot in Henry Baker Hall.

Currently representing Ward 4, Bresciani held a campaign launch event on Tuesday to officially declare her intention to run for mayor of Regina.

Seated between banners with the slogans “from nonsense to common sense” and “Refocus Regina,” Bresciani promised affordability for taxpayers and to “hold administration fiscally responsible.”

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“It is not because I don’t want the job as councillor of Ward 4; it is because I see a gap in what the whole city needs,” she said.

Bresciani joins a race that already features six other candidates, including incumbent Mayor Sandra Masters, who is seeking a second term.

Bill Pratt announced his candidacy last week, following first-time political hopefuls Brandon Abtosway, Shawn Sparvier and Kevin Kardash. Chad Bachynski, a mechanical engineer and manager at SaskEnergy with ties to the construction sector, also announced plans to run for mayor in a news release on Tuesday.

“As your mayor, I will lead — not manage — the team at city hall,” Bresciani told media after her speech. “In reflection of these last four years, I would say that there’s some things that I want to do differently.”

“We’ve seen a lot of things in the chambers that I would never allow to happen, with respect to speaking to councillors, to each other, to the public and to our administration. I think my leadership style is different, and it is my promise to be collaborative.”

She pointed to the city’s increased debt limit and slate of large capital projects driving the need for more spending room as major pillars of her campaign, saying it will be her priority to stop allowing any further debt for megaprojects and to curb “overpromising, overspending and confusing priorities” by city council.

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Answering to her own involvement in those spending decisions as a sitting councillor for the last eight years, Bresciani said she has always voted to be “prudent with tax dollars.”

“Throughout my whole terms, I’ve stood strong against major increases,” she said. “I’m not a spender, and we have to be accountable for the tax dollar.”

Bresciani was first elected in 2016 and acclaimed in 2020 as the only candidate for Ward 4.

She currently serves as a member of the board of police commissioners and the city’s accessibility advisory committee, as co-chair of the planning committee for Frost Regina, as a non-voting member on the interim board of directors for the Regina Exhibition Association, and on the board of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association.

She also has family ties to the development community through her son Josh Bresciani and The Winchester Group, a commercial developer that just expanded into residential with an apartment project in Douglas Park.

Bresciani voluntarily recused herself from that discussion at council, and from past items regarding the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, but voted on later changes to the city’s development fees policy.

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“I will continue to recuse myself, even if there’s a perception” of conflict of interest in development related issues if elected mayor, she promised.

She still feels she can be “a hundred per cent” effective in the mayor’s office with such constraints, she said.

“I’ve got a deputy mayor. I’ve got 10 other councillors who can make those decisions. I don’t have to be the only one.”

Bresciani said she has no large campaign backers, and pledged not to take financial donations during the election from developers or “anybody that I think is going to have an influence in council.”

“I will not do that. I’ve seen that in this last term and it’s wrong. It’s a conflict of interest,” she said.

Bresciani also promised to repair the reputational damage of the flopped Experience Regina campaign, push to explore adding more living spaces to revive the downtown after hours and petition for the municipal election cycle to be moved from fall to spring to avoid overlap with provincial elections.

Candidates can’t campaign for more than one elected position at a time. By throwing her hat in the ring for mayor, Bresciani gives up any possibility of returning to her council position in this cycle. That leaves an opening for the five candidates to have declared intentions to run in Ward 4: Charles Umeh, Kofo Oni, Deb Nyczai, Glen Geiger and Balvir Bhathal.

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The formal nomination period runs from Sept. 25 to Oct. 9. Election day in Regina is Nov. 13.

lkurz@postmedia.com

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