Municipal election · Osoyoos
Dustin: Fix the water and bring back the Fun
Mayoral candidate Dustin Sikora on a three-step water plan, short-term rentals, taxes, Town Hall turnover, and making Osoyoos a real year-round town
SO What interview · Dustin Sikora, Osoyoos mayoral candidate
Osoyoos mayoral candidate Dustin Sikora owns and runs a large shooting range in Langley and the local range here. In an interview with SO What, he talked about why his business background fits the mayor’s job, his three-step water plan, short-term rentals, taxes, and how to make Osoyoos a real year-round town.
His main theme was operations. A town, he said, is people and a budget — the same things he already manages in business. He is running, he said, because he does not trust how water and Town Hall have been handled.
What about your background lends itself to running a town?
Dustin was asked how his background prepares him to be mayor.
He said a town works like any other organization. It has people, a culture, a job to get done, and a budget. “Show me your people, and I’ll show you your culture,” he said, repeating a line he uses in business. Companies, military units, volunteer groups, and governments all run on those pieces.
At his Langley range he has more than 40 employees. Most have been with him since he opened 14 years ago, he said. In private business, losing half your staff means you go bankrupt. That is why he thinks business owners often do well in politics — and why many also get frustrated by drama, red tape, and people trying to “hijack the steering wheel,” especially developers and other levels of government.
Nothing makes him “great,” he said. What qualifies him is simpler: he already runs a group about the same size as Town Hall, with a multi-million-dollar budget, and it works well enough that he can live four or five hours away. He said he does not particularly want municipal politics. Looking at who is running — and at how the town has been managed — he felt he had to step in. Several councillor candidates this time, he added, also did not want to run, but share the same worry: the town has been run badly, and you fix that by building a team you trust.
On today’s Town Hall, he pointed to heavy staff turnover. He said more than half the staff left in about two years, along with firings, suspensions, and other turmoil. “I can’t be bleeding 50% of my staff in the private sector and expect to not be bankrupt.” Running that kind of organization himself, he argued, is the skill set he brings.
What’s your solution for the water issue?
Asked for a water plan, Dustin described three stages — near-term, medium-term, and long-term — and said you start the first while you plan the rest.
Near-term: Put commercial filters on the schools and at the Sonora Centre so the manganese advisory can be lifted at those places. Add a 24-hour clean-water tap somewhere convenient so residents can fill jugs.
Medium-term: Bring in local camp-logistics technology already used at remote work sites. He named Matrix Camps & Logistics as the company that has approached the town. The idea: connect their system to a well, test it in the quiet season, and see if it can lower manganese and other contaminants enough to lift the advisory. He said they offered to test for free, already do similar work in Terrace, and gave contacts. In his account, the town stonewalled the offer.
Long-term: Find a lasting fresh-water source and pipe it in. He criticized a $350,000 engineering report that, in his telling, only looked at two options — one bad, one very expensive — and skipped others. Those others include piping mountain spring water from Anarchist Mountain, and a Similkameen River approach like Oroville’s. Put him in a room with the responsible provincial minister, he said — not for photos and grant talk, but to clear the path for a pipe. “I don’t care about your provincial money. I want you to get out of the way!”
On cost, he used rough numbers from his campaign notes: about $1 million to $1.5 million per kilometre of pipe. A 21-inch pipe, he said, could serve a town of 20,000. His order of work: first figure out how far good water is. Draw a circle of about 20 kilometres — a distance he thinks the town could afford, maybe a $20–30 million pipe. Then spend exploratory money (he mentioned about a million dollars) drilling for mountain spring capacity — thousands of gallons a minute across several wells — or study a Similkameen route. Oroville, he said, basically drinks Similkameen water through wells near the river.
He argued that borrowing for new supply can cost less, over time, than endlessly patching a weak system. As one example, he cited about $750,000 a year spent on enzymes for the sewage ponds — money he ties to brackish, chemically softened water. Fresher mountain water, he said, could mean less softener use, easier sewage treatment, and faster release of treated effluent. He also warned that an $80–100 million project promised far in the future becomes a political carrot. With provincial approvals that cooperate, he wants a different standard: “shovels in the ground in like 12 months.”
“Our water is making people sick,” he said. “I’ve had enough.” (Claims about elevated cancer rates and individual medical cases in the interview are his. SO What has not independently checked them.)
What’s your stance on Airbnbs?
On short-term rentals, Dustin said people imagine opposite extremes — pure upside, or parties until 2 a.m. He believes in open markets. Someone who saved for decades to buy an investment property, he said, should not see that asset crushed overnight. Osoyoos is a resort municipality and could have opted out of the tighter provincial rules and “harnessed” visitor demand. Instead, in his view, council “shot itself in the foot” and wiped out real-estate value across town.
But Osoyoos also cannot become Daytona Beach. He pointed to neighbours who moved because of illegal, unenforced rentals and late-night pool noise. His answer is better bylaws and better-trained bylaw staff — not a ban that throws the tool away. At his Sonora Centre town hall (he said more than 150 people came), an informal show of hands was roughly 75–85% in favour of a workable Airbnb path. The rest, he guessed, mostly want quiet and do not see the upside. Show the benefits, enforce the rules, and support can grow.
Done right, he argued, property values rise, owners are more willing to pay property tax tied to those values, and the town gets more money for services. “I think Airbnb is a major tool… you need people with skill to operate that tool.”
Would you roll back the recent tax hikes?
Asked whether he would reverse recent tax increases, Dustin would not promise until he can see the full budget from the inside.
“Money solves money problems,” he said. You have to find waste before you know what you can cut. He gave examples such as buying a fleet of new trucks under a previous operations director when solid used vehicles might have been enough. Free up cash by fixing those choices, then decide whether that money should pay for infrastructure that keeps property values and services rising. If Town Hall runs well and the town’s reputation improves, he argued, you may not need to raise taxes — and confidence alone can bring investment before the new projects even open.
How do you make Osoyoos a four-season town?
Beyond water and rentals, Dustin was asked how to stretch past a short summer rush.
Start with spring and fall, he said — especially fall, which he called spectacular. Hold outdoor farm and harvest events through Halloween. Lean into wine-country fog and harvest season. He brushed off repeated indoor aquatic-centre studies as a $50 million dream that never gets built. Build something more like Spirit Ridge instead: outdoor pools and hot tubs that are simply heated all year — he also mentioned Langley Otter Co-op — maybe around $8 million plus winter heating, not another half-million-dollar study.
He also wants summer events that still work when wildfire smoke hits, after heavy cancellations last August: water or motor sports that draw visitors even when the air is bad. Film was a big idea. Contacts in “Hollywood North,” he said, told him Osoyoos is poorly listed as a filming location. With this landscape and agriculture, it should already be a busy film hub bringing money into a tourism town. Music in the Park is great, he said, but small compared with what a real festival could do with this geography and climate.
The deeper fix is culture: swap a habit of “no” for a habit of “yes.” “Imagination has no limits… bring the party back.”
SO What interviewed Dustin Sikora. Condensed and edited for clarity; questions summarized from a recorded conversation. Medical and staff-turnover claims are the candidate’s accounts, not independently verified by SO What.