BOB ERB ADDS NAME TO COUNCIL HOPEFUL LIST

RECENT PROVINCIAL election Marijuana Party candidate Bob Erb says he
will run for a Terrace city council seat in the byelection set for
Sept. 8. Erb joins two declared candidates - longtime community
volunteer Betty Campbell and Marylin Davies, a former music teacher
here and original co-founder of the Pacific Northwest Music Festival.
Local audiologist Joely Viveiros is also thinking of running.

"I'm going to do it," Erb said, adding current city councillor Rich
McDaniel encouraged him to enter the race.

The vote will replace the seat vacated last month by councillor Olga
Power, who has moved to Vancouver Island.

He wouldn't run as a Marijuana Party candidate, but Erb says he'd
bring the philosophy to council chambers.

"I'd like to get the city council more aware of the benefits of
marijuana to the economy and the harm of the policing of it - the
waste of police resources which costs us dearly."

If elected, Erb said he'd push to replace the RCMP with a city force
making policing more efficient and effective and responsive to the
community.

Council, which sets policing priorities each year, should have
officers concentrate on crimes other than minor marijuana
infractions, he said. "There's got to be lots of other property
crimes," he said. "Marijuana should not be prosecuted vigorously
except blatant grow-ops, or drug houses causing neighbourhood
disturbances."

The city council led the creation of drug free zones, which he said
aren't working and should be either better enforced or abandoned.

"If we're not going to enforce drug free zones tear down the signs -
they just make us a laughingstock."

He also wants major bars to provide courtesy vans for patrons - to
help reduce drinking and driving - as a condition of licence renewals.

Although Erb doesn't live within city limits and therefore isn't a
city taxpayer, there's no requirement to be a city resident to run
for council. Councillor Lynne Christiansen also lives out of town, as
did past councillors Gordon Hull and Linda Hawes.

Erb finished third in Skeena in the recent provincial election,
collecting 6.1 per cent of the vote.

He got just over 200 votes in Terrace but would have to do better
than that to win a council seat.

Sitting councillors were all elected with 1,600 to 2,300 votes,
although byelections are sometimes won on much smaller amounts
because of lower voter turnout.