Areas of Focus

Credit: Cochrane Times

I am the first person to announce my candidacy. I do this for one reason, I believe you, the reader, deserve someone who’s ready to talk about your needs now and not the last couple of weeks relying on an information blitz to get elected.

By the end of this month, I will have provided everyone all of the details you will need to answer two question, one, what I hope you to accomplish and two, how am I going to do it.

I have committed to 3 main areas of focus and I have clear and realistic plans to achieve these goals. Those 3 areas of focus include one, restoring budget fundamentals to save the Cochrane taxpayers money, two, I will restore transparency and accountability in council chambers and three, I will address the other issues affecting our Cochrane like the environment, emergency services, seniors, traffic, public safety, sustainable growth etc. I also have some other ideas that you may find interesting.

First, I would like to respond to one of the Mayoral candidates’ areas of focus (Mr. Morgan Nagel). I want to applaud Mr. Nagel for being willing to give some level of detail for his plans.

He stated he is focused on Managing growth and gives 3 plans to do this, one setting an annual population growth target of 2-3%, two, allocating portions of future development approvals to urban reserves and three, reducing density targets to six to eighth units per acre. He also talks about protecting Green Spaces and Reshaping Civic Leadership.

I couldn’t agree more these priorities! My only comment or point of concern would be some of the stated plans for managing growth. I’m in 100% agreement of setting an annual growth rate but how?! How will he do this when he was part of the approval process for budgets whose spending plans are now solely dependent on a higher rate of growth? I am also concerned about a blanket statement that curbs all density targets – density targets do have a place but not necessarily in ever place.

My commitment comments for this week are:

I will save us money. Some members of this council have seemed largely silent in their questions and/or spending commitments in their last 8-years in council. In the last budget there were line items that did not seem to reconcile – that is just unacceptable. But we do know this, that we are now on a growth dependent budget, we have largely already spent the different revenue sources in the near future and our debt levels have risen dramatically.

We need clear answers to where we sit financially and unless I’m convinced otherwise, I will be requesting an independent 3rd-party audit of all the town’s finances. I will use that audit not only to give us a clear picture of Cochrane financial health, but to also uncover areas of duplication, efficiencies and possibly recover funds.

I will be focusing on growing our taxation base – details to come soon.

I will continue leading by example when it comes to transparency and accountability. I will also ensure there is safety for others with the formation of a whistleblower policy.

I will ensure that you can easily follow what council does to ensure another SLS takeover does not happen. That will involve reformatting meeting notes and ensuring a process is put in place to avoid abuse of the ‘in-camera’ sessions.

I will focus on sustained growth - It appears I have an ally with Mr. Nagel in this area. I can fully support an annual population growth target depending on the procedural tools used to make this happen.

I’ve already announced my focus on the environment. I was challenged on this statement when someone said, ‘It is nice to say you want to protect the environment but how are you going to do that’. Here is one way, I will complete a review of existing environmental wetlands/Riparian lands inventory with goal of creating a natural assets inventory for all of Cochrane. I want to update and collate existing information to plug gaps and to make a planning document to help guild Cochrane’s future development.

Mr. Nagel has now committed to allocating portions of future development approvals to urban reserve. With this tool in mind - I want to work with our community partners to ensure nature space exists between our surrounding communities through parks/wildlife corridors. 

The last commitment I will detail at this time also relates to Mr. Nagel. In the 2018 UCP nomination contest Mr. Nagel lost out to our current MLA Mr. Gunthrie. If Mr. Nagel had won, this would have triggered an expensive by-election. I want to save us money and have a numbered ballot count which would avoid any similar situation from developing again.

I look forward to talking to you soon.