City council candidate wants a safe community for families and business
By Al Beeber on September 17, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com If third time is indeed the charm, Harold Pereverseff may find himself elected to city council in October.Pereverseff, a 35-year-resident of Lethbridge, announced his candidacy for city council on Thursday at City Hall.
Pereverseff has run twice previously for council and is hoping to build on the momentum he had in 2017.
His first try at council, which came after discussions with former councilman Tom Wickersham, wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.
Pereverseff says he wasn’t prepared on that initial try but this year is going to be different.
“The first time was an interesting situation. Tom Wickersham actually came and said he’s stepping down and somewhere along the line, I’ve known him for a while, I was on his radar,” he recalled.
Wickersham suggested he take a run and “I wasn’t prepared. It showed and it showed at the polls.”
In 2017, he was one of a whopping 27 candidates running and he had better success.
“This is going to be different this year for sure.”
Pereverseff’s campaign platform is “Stop, look, listen and proceed,” said the former member of the Lethbridge Transparency Council, whose board he resigned from before launching his latest candidacy.
“My thing is basically a safe community for families, business and to foster that. I’ve been here 35 years, I’ve raised my family here, I’ve got my grandchildren here, I love the city. I’m very positive that this is the best place to live but there’s issues that we had, there’s issues that we have now and there’ll be issues in the future,” Pereverseff said.
The candidate said city council in the past has made decisions that were “reactive, knee-jerk” and it didn’t move on those until “there’s people literally on their doorstep protesting.”
Pereverseff is a believer in mayoral hopeful Blaine Hyggen’s approach to being on council.
“Be accessible, be out there and do what Blaine has been doing. He’s been out there with the community and understanding the situations and bringing them into council. To me that’s government.”
Pereverseff supports fiscal restraint, transparency and accountability and responsible expenditures by council.
Pereserveff cited the SCS situation and curbside recycling as examples where the next council needs to be better.
“Harm reduction and harm prevention is one thing but build it and they will come. And they did,” Pereverseff said.
“It’s got to be managed, it’s got to be planned out and it’s got to be effective,” he said of efforts to help the addicted and homeless in the community.
“You have to be fair and very transparent.”
“I’m retired now and I’ve got full-time dedication to the job,” said Pereverseff, who spent years as superintendent at Coutts Customs. He then moved to Lethbridge and worked in the post office building with Customs until it closed and then moved over to the Canada Revenue Agency where he spent nine years in the same building.
His experience in federal government will be an asset in municipal politics, he said, due to his work dealing with legislation, the public and business, which constituted his work at the tax office, he said.
“Quite honestly, you don’t survive in the federal government if you’re not able to deal with the public,” Pereverseff said.
Pereverseff was part of a group of three who tried to petition the city over its curbside recycling initiative.
He did not like the idea the city was taking public a program that was being handled by private business.
“My big concern and the people I was involved with was the fact the City was taking the private industry that was doing the curbside recycling and basically just putting them out of the business.
“Yet they have their own facilities for collections so we were pushing hard to stop that and I organized, myself and two other people, a petition here in Lethbridge and took the signatures to city council, presented that, hoping to get the decision held back until the election so we could get on a plebiscite or a referendum.” That effort, despite getting more than 6,000 signatures, wasn’t successful.
Through his work as longtime president of the International Twinning Association and involvement with other organizations, Pereverseff also has experience in international relations, said the father of six and grandfather of eight. Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter 4
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