News profile1. What is the biggest challenge(s) facing Redcliff into the next four years, and what is your vision for how the town should approach it?
I think some of the challenges we’re going to face going forward which are not uncommon to any municipality and that is ageing infrastructure. We currently have an infrastructure deficit. Which means we are investing less in infrastructure than the value of our current infrastructure is deteriorating every year. This is certainly a very common problem throughout the province, but it will need to be addressed at some point. Which also leads into another problem that we will face and that is inflationary costs with doing projects in the future, the cost of doing business is continually going up so we have to be so careful with tax dollars. Now every person campaigning for this election and every election in the past has always said the same thing that we “need to be efficient with tax dollars”, but it’s becoming more and more of a priority. This current council recently was asked about a pay increase which we unanimously voted down, I think that shows a commitment to our community and is evident that we do not do this job for the money after all, we are citizens also. As far as the solution for these things, there is no easy solution that I can just snap my fingers and fix, but what we can do is just have good leadership from council down to staff and do our best for our community making the best possible decisions as they arise With the best possible information available.
2. What is your vision for economic development in Redcliff, and how would you suggest the town work to achieve that?
For Redcliff, I think the easiest path towards economic development is attracting more people to live in our community. It is a better bang for your buck here. This area of Southern Alberta is generally much more affordable to live in, our weather and sunshine can’t be beat. Our new school that is getting built should attract more families, and those new families should spur more business development and if we could attract more industry creating more jobs that is an upward spiral that has no ceiling. I guess to sum it up in a nutshell just make our community as liveable as possible.
3. What are the top three, in your opinion, infrastructure needs in Redcliff, and how would you approach seeing those to fruition?
The first one in my mind is no question the new school. We need to work with With the school district to get that built and up and running. It’s going to take significant investment from the town to get the site ready for them to get shovels in the ground and we’ve already got a plan moving forward with that. The site is currently at the engineering phase.
The second one is ageing infrastructure we need to stay up on our roads, waterlines, etc. and unfortunately, that is an expensive process, but it is a necessity. We currently have identified a project for the zero hundred block to 200 block of fifth Street to be redone totally. More projects like this will be coming in the future at a pace that is palatable I would hope.
Thirdly. We have a continuing problems with our waste water treatment being sent to Medicine Hat. There is infrastructure in place that we need to make sure it’s operating as designed to curb the spikes of water that we send to the city. The reason it needs to be curbed is so we can send them a much lower manageable flow rate, and thus our costs go down. And how we accomplish this is to ensure we have good reliable data being sent to counsel to make educated decisions on if more investment is needed.
