Cypress County Coun. Robin Kurpjuweit is running to be the director of District 1 for the Rural Municipalities Association.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
Cypress County Coun. Robin Kurpjuweit has set his sights on becoming one of the new Rural Municipalities Association directors following an election at the upcoming convention.
Kurpjuweit has long had a passion for advocacy, something which previously led him to serving on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
“It’s been a couple of years now since my time there came to an end, and leading into this year, there was a lot of consideration towards whether I wanted to run as a director or as president, vice president, what that might look like,” said Kurpjuweit.
Ultimately, he made the decision to run for District 1 director, with the possibility of running to be vice president should current VP Kara Westerlund prove successful in her candidacy for president.
“Westerlund has been somebody who I’ve worked with for a long time and she’s the sitting vice president right now, and so if she ends up getting in as president, then the vice president position opens up, and that would be something that would be up my alley,” said Kurpjuweit.
He said his decision to not run for the presidency was partially an acknowledgement of how well Westerlund would fit the role, as well as having “strong feelings” about her opportunity to be the first female RMA president.
This year’s ballots are full of strong contenders, said Kurpjuweit.
“You’ve got Jason Schneider from Vulcan County, you’ve got John Burrows, you’ve got Ben Fadeyiw, MD of Bonnyville. All of them are great leaders,” said Kurpjuweit. “They’re great committed councillors that have been doing this for a long time, so one way or the other, we’re going to have a good team there.”
Kurpjuweit feels that his time with FCM would provide valuable experience to the board, and should he be elected, he intends to focus on building the relationship between the province and RMA, to allow them to continue to work together on major issues into the future.
“There’s been some pretty hard topics that have been tackled in the last little bit,” said Kurpjuweit. “We’ve had to push pretty hard on some of these issues and at times, it’s become maybe a little bit more adversarial than I would like to see.”
It’s important that we get the voice of RMA across to province, said Kurpjuweit, but they need to maintain the relationship with the province, so that after these issues are settled, the RMA still has the political capital left to be able to advocate for what new issues may come.
“There’s big shoes to fill, but I think our main focus right now need to be on what the next 10 years will look like. It’s a great opportunity, and it’s also super important that we get the right direction and go forward from there,” said Kurpjuweit.
