Paul Serup running for City Council

Paul Serup will be seeking a seat on City Council come Saturday.

Serup is a Prince George born and raised businessman, renovation maintenance contractor, as well as an independent research and author.

Serup said the main reason he decided to run for council was the homelessness situation.

“The downtown is becoming really affected by it, business has been affected,” Serup explained.

“One business owner told me that 25% of the people who are referred to him won’t come to his business downtown won’t come to his business downtown because it’s downtown.”

He added it’s spreading to other places.

“It’s just crime and grime, and it’s not good for the city, it’s not good for the folks that are on the streets themselves,” he said.

“I feel it should be not studied to death anymore, we have to really change things.”

He thinks the burden needs to be taken off the residents and businesses downtown.

“I think we should have a state of the art recovery centre in a more remote part of the city, and people camping in city parks and sidewalks just wouldn’t be allowed to continue,” he said.

“At the recovery centre, people would be helped with whatever they needed help with. I think a significant problem is mental illness, drug addiction is another real part of that mix.”

Serup added that vaccine mandates are an important issue to him.

“I believe it’s medical coercion, they’re illogical, they’re unscientific, they should end, they should never have begun,” he said.

“Pretty incredibly, the city has been judging people’s religious faith, and deciding whether their faith passed muster as far as getting an exemption. I think that’s pretty outrageous, Prince George should never have gone down this path.

Serup said he thinks the city needs to do better at being more open for business, including how the downtown affects people, as well as making building permits quicker to get and more affordable.

“A city government shouldn’t be in the way of the business that we need to expand tax base to get jobs, especially for our young people,” he said.

Other issues Serup said are important to him are the cost overruns on projects in the city, wasting infrastructure, and food security in the north.

The municipal election will take place on October 15th.