Two Richmond city councillors are racing for the mayor’s office in the municipal elections this October, bringing a change to the city’s leadership as the incumbent mayor steps down.

After nearly 25 years in office, Mayor Malcolm Brodie said in September he would not be running for re-election.

Three-term city councillor and Olympian Alexa Loo announced her candidacy on Saturday.

“Some of the most important issues for Richmond are looking after our infrastructure, both our built and our natural, making sure that we raise our dikes, protect people’s homes from flooding and people’s families inside those homes,” Loo told CBC News.

Coun. Kash Heed, a former B.C. solicitor general and former West Vancouver police chief, will be her opponent.

Besides focusing on public safety and housing, Heed said he wants more accountability and change at city hall, including putting term limits on councillors.

“I want to be portrayed as different. I want to be portrayed as bringing sensible change to Richmond because the status quo is not working and it will not work as we go forward,” he said.

New candidates, similar politics: prof

While the mayoral candidates envision the future with someone different in charge, the values held by many Richmond voters may stay the same.

According to University of B.C. political scientist Stewart Prest, the city continues to lean Conservative.

“This feels like a moment where Richmond’s politics is being renewed, but not in a revolutionary way,” said Prest.

“To some extent, it is a continuation of Richmond being a centre-right community in many ways. And so we can locate this battle for the mayor’s chair inside the debates that are playing out within the B.C. Conservative Party, more broadly.”

Prest said, as an example, leadership candidates for the B.C. Conservative Party are positioning themselves in some “spectrum of opposition” to Indigenous land claims, namely a recent claim in Richmond.

The Cowichan lands ruling — a contentious court decision in August that established Aboriginal title alongside private property ownership of land in one part of Richmond — is among the city’s top issues.

Loo received applause from her audience on Saturday when she said she would “protect private property rights and freehold title by continuing to defend the indefeasibility of land title while supporting reconciliation.”

Heed said he’s hopeful an appeal court will overturn the Cowichan decision, and if not, that a higher court will do a better job with the case.

He said if a court doesn’t rule that property owners fully own their property, he thinks the federal government will have to make changes to Indigenous treaty rights under the Constitution.

Another important community issue two years ago involved a proposed supervised consumption site (SCS). It drew enormous public backlash, and is now something that both mayoral candidates said they won’t accept.

“I’ve learned, I’ve listened to the community. They don’t want it here,” said Heed, who initially put forward the motion to explore a SCS at Richmond Hospital.

“But I was the one that brought forward a motion to encourage the provincial government to get secure care for people that have significant mental health issues, severe drug addiction, or both,” he said.

Prest said he doesn’t think the counterpoint to the candidates’ policy positions exists yet in the city.

“We don’t really have a voice in Richmond trying to speak for the need to maintain those spaces for a more inclusive approach to addictions, that are speaking for a need to really grapple with the legacies of Indigenous exclusion in the province,” he said.

“Those voices aren’t really present, at least so far in this mayor’s race.”