With the federal election done and dusted, political focus in Alberta has shifted to the upcoming municipal election, and John McMurray has announced his intention of securing the Division 5 seat on Rocky View County (RVC) council.
“We still are not achieving an effective council,” McMurray said, of his motivation to run in the Oct. 18 election. “Decisions they make are biased towards development and not in favour [of] the residents.”
Carrying an engineering background and having run campaigns in hopes of landing a spot in RVC chambers before, McMurray said he wants to add his skills related to problem-solving, troubleshooting, and financial analysis to a council that he believes has been lacking in those areas.
“That is why we still have so much debt in the County,” he said.
In terms of his career and background, McMurray has lived in RVC with his wife and four children since 1995, on a quarter section of land between Airdrie and Irricana, where they raise Angus cattle.
While McMurray grew up on a farm and is still involved in the agriculture sector through his farming, his day job is working as an engineer for Halliburton Canada.
McMurray said on top of “doing less,” he thinks one thing that could be done to help RVC operate more smoothly is to have the County work with mapping companies like Google and Apple to ensure delivery personnel can find easy routes to deliver packages to residents. He claimed this is something he noticed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It seems like that is a service the County should provide,” he said. “It would really help residents.”
He also spoke about the need to explore faster internet throughout RVC.
“That was stopped,” he said. “It was a relatively small amount, around $100,000 or something, yet they found $10 million to run sewer and water lines from East Balzac to West Balzac, even though there is no pressing need or urgency for that.”
McMurray said there have been a lot of issues with council over the last four years. He added on top of debt accrued and other items, what came with having three councillors actively sanctioned for a decent amount of the four-year term was an “embarrassment.”
“It was an embarrassment to see what they were doing to people that were just trying to do their job,” he said.
The candidate also spoke about the regular 6-3 vote split that has occurred repeatedly over the last four years, with the three votes that were usually against big items coming from the three formerly sanctioned councillors.
“Really big decisions should require more than a simple majority in council,” he said. “Maybe not unanimous, maybe six out of seven. When three or four people can make multi-million-dollar decisions that affect the future of the county for decades to come, it doesn’t seem like a good system.”
Running in Division 5, McMurray will be taking on three opponents. The other candidates include incumbent councillor and former reeve Greg Boehlke, as well as Ted Francois, and Mark Jette.
McMurray said he thinks Boehlke will provide the most formidable hurdle.
“I don’t know if it’s just Alberta, but typically in municipal politics, incumbents win 90 per cent of the time. It is really difficult to unseat them,” he said. “Now, with the four of us running, I don’t know how much that is going to change things.”
With a federal election recently passed, McMurray is hoping people aren’t suffering from voter fatigue when the municipal election comes around, because he said it is always important to have as many people as possible come out to vote.
“There are usually very low turnouts in general,” he said. “Instead of thousands of potential voters, we often get within the hundreds. It’s unfortunate. It would be nice to have more people come out to vote.”
For more information on McMurray’s platform, visit johnmcmurray.org
Jordan Stricker, AirdrieToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @Jay_Strickz
