After seven years on Rocky View County council, Division nine’s Paul McLean will seek re-election this fall.
He has found the job truly fulfilling, especially interacting with Rocky View residents, making small and large decisions on their behalf.
“It’s been a great experience,” said McLean. “It has been one of the best things that I have done in my life to be in this role.”
As a father to young children, McLean strives to represent a large sector of the County’s population.
“My perspective is family-based,” he said. “I look at what type of Rocky View we are building to both help families now and in the future.”
That perspective makes him focus on the long-term future of the municipality, and has helped shape his decisions over the last two terms.
McLean sits on several recreation committees, including the Ranch Lands Recreation District.
“Recreation and culture is what we are trying to support through Rocky View,” said McLean. “That is my continued focus as I look forward to the next term.”
McLean believes that healthy communities have a variety of people in them. He has promoted age-in-place facilities for seniors and the introduction of additional dwelling units within the county.
“We were very concerned that we were isolating certain portions of our population,” said McLean. “I have had a continued focus that we have to provide for many types of people to live in Rocky View, from the young to the very old. We always have to provide diverse forms of housing.”
McLean is also a member of the Growth Management Strategy committee. As such, he helped create a road map for growth in the county over the next 50 years.
The plan aims to maintain agricultural land while providing areas of development to support the area’s expected population growth.
“None of us can predict everything, however, it does provide us something we can critique and evaluate and move forward on,” said McLean.
He is proud the County has started to make a shift from a residential to a commercial tax base, allowing council to freeze taxes this year, despite a global economic downturn.
“When I came into council, one of the big things I saw was the reliance on the residential taxes,” said McLean. “It has taken a lot of hard decisions to start changing that. It has started to show a dividend right now.”
The County is a good place to do business, he added.
As chair of the Infrastructure and Operations committee, McLean has a keen interest in the sustainability and conservation of water.
“We need to be looking at different technology to support our development in Rocky View,” said McLean. “I feel I can provide good value in the debate with other councillors on the topics of water and wastewater conservation and technology.”
Although he is a part-time information technology consultant, McLean’s main focus is his job on council.
His advice to anyone interested in becoming a councillor is to understand the diversity of the municipality and that the job of a councillor is to represent the whole county.
“You have to come in with a broad desire to represent the residents, not one thing you are trying to fix,” said McLean. “If you only come in with one issue…then it is hard to represent the diverse tasks.”
If re-elected, McLean is looking forward to guarding the collective interests of the County during his next term in office.
“We always have to be there to remember Rocky View is a collective of many people, and if we want to be successful, we have to take into account that collective,” he said.
“I am up to the task.”
