Mark Vonesch_ Two Weeks into the 2026 Campaign

How many signs did you print of?

I printed 50.

And I've got two signs.

One is a vote October 17th sign.

I put that sign out first.

No matter what, let's get as many people out to the polls as possible.

Whether you're supporting me or someone else, civic participation is really important.

So that was the intention of the first sign.

get out and vote.

And it was obviously branded with my colors and branding.

And then the other one was a very specific one of reelect Mark Finesh's regional director for Cortez Island.

On my last interview, I shared one of the big moments of that first year as the regional director was working with the fire department to make sure the governance stayed on Cortez and that they were providing the best services possible to Cortez.

Another big moment in this term has been the electoral area planning service issue.

Electoral area planning is a service of the SRD that the four electoral areas are a part of.

People may remember about a year ago, there was a motion of the board table to explore Having the municipalities and other communities at the SRD join the planning service, that raised a big alarm for me because it could have changed all the land use planning on Cortez, zoning, bylaws, OCP.

If Campbell River joined our planning service, they could overpower us with their five votes.

So this felt like a big moment for me as far as standing up for Cortez and making sure that decisions about land use planning in rural communities is made by rural representatives.

It's a battle that we won because we went to the press, we spoke to Campbell River residents, talked about how it would cost Campbell River taxpayers $500,000 a year to join the service when there's a lot better things to be spending that money on in Campbell River.

So we were able to win that campaign and that felt like a big win.

for Cortez, and it felt like a big win for the electoral areas of the Strathcona Regional District as well.

How many signs did you print of?

I printed 50.

And I've got two signs.

One is a vote October 17th sign.

I put that sign out first.

No matter what, let's get as many people out to the polls as possible.

Whether you're supporting me or someone else, civic participation is really important.

So that was the intention of the first sign.

get out and vote.

And it was obviously branded with my colors and branding.

And then the other one was a very specific one of reelect Mark Finesh's regional director for Cortez Island.

On my last interview, I shared one of the big moments of that first year as the regional director was working with the fire department to make sure the governance stayed on Cortez and that they were providing the best services possible to Cortez.

Another big moment in this term has been the electoral area planning service issue.

Electoral area planning is a service of the SRD that the four electoral areas are a part of.

People may remember about a year ago, there was a motion of the board table to explore Having the municipalities and other communities at the SRD join the planning service, that raised a big alarm for me because it could have changed all the land use planning on Cortez, zoning, bylaws, OCP.

If Campbell River joined our planning service, they could overpower us with their five votes.

So this felt like a big moment for me as far as standing up for Cortez and making sure that decisions about land use planning in rural communities is made by rural representatives.

It's a battle that we won because we went to the press, we spoke to Campbell River residents, talked about how it would cost Campbell River taxpayers $500,000 a year to join the service when there's a lot better things to be spending that money on in Campbell River.

So we were able to win that campaign and that felt like a big win.

for Cortez, and it felt like a big win for the electoral areas of the Strathcona Regional District as well.