Sheldon Starrett was elected to Richmond City Council on October 17, 2026. The City's official count, declared on October 21, 2026, gives him 13,576 votes, fourth among the 55 council candidates. The City's declaration of election by voting prints Advance Richmond as his elector organization. Richmond News reported that the organization, new in 2026, elected three councillors and three school trustees. At its watch party he told the crowd he would keep his promise to end what he calls the drug sites, the temporary modular housing, Richmond News reported, and he told the paper his first agenda item would be to rescind Council's 2024 motion on a drug consumption site at Richmond Hospital.
The City's official results of October 19, 2022 list him eighteenth of 22 council candidates with 5,573 votes, and Richmond News reported in 2024 that he had run on Chak Au's slate; his 2022 VoteMate page names the Richmond Community Coalition. Richmond News reported in September 2026 that he had announced a run for mayor with the Richmond chapter of the Conservative Electors Association in May, said on September 1 that he would run as an independent, and joined Advance Richmond as a council candidate on September 9; the association said it had removed him as its candidate. Richmond News reported in February 2024 that he held a press conference against the motion to explore a supervised consumption site at the hospital and told Council that crime, needles and public disorder had increased in the city centre since the temporary modular housing opened. Global News quoted him, for Keep Richmond Safe, at a rally at City Hall against low-barrier housing held days after the City cancelled a 90-unit supportive housing project at Cambie and Sexsmith roads.
By his own account, in the statement he gave the City and on his site, he was born at Richmond Hospital, lives beside the Alderbridge temporary modular housing, founded Keep Richmond Safe, and led the opposition to the consumption site and to the Cambie Permanent Housing project. The organization's page says he works as a product consultant with the BC Liquor Distribution Branch and has volunteered with the Rotary Club; his 2022 VoteMate page says the same. voche.me has not checked these with those bodies.
His site says he will vote to close every temporary modular housing site in Richmond, make all supportive housing drug-free, bring a motion to overturn Council's 2024 decision on a consumption site, require councillors to publish a record of the events they attend in an official capacity, and press the Province for a drug detox centre and secure treatment facility in Richmond. It also says councillors Kash Heed and Carol Day should face Code of Conduct reviews over the consumption site debate of February 2024; that is his own claim, and voche.me found no finding by the City on it. In his statement to the City he listed five priorities: end the drug sites, freeze tax increases, stop wasteful spending, champion affordable and aspirational home ownership, and deliver pragmatic transit solutions.
