The Rocky View County municipal election is fast approaching and a current candidate has announced he’ll be in the running for another term.
Al Sacuta, councillor of Division 8, said he’s seeking re-election to continue working on issues from his 2010 election platform that haven’t been completed.
“I’d like to see to those items rather than leaving work unfinished. Also, there are many new things that are important in my area that I’d at least like to get started and I think the only way you can do that is to run again,” said the 22-year resident of Bearspaw and former consulting electrical engineer.
He holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Alberta and an MBA from the University of Calgary.
Sacuta said there are four areas of concern that he’d like council to continue focusing on if he were re-elected. The first is to see the proposed County Plan – a municipal planning document that will guide growth in the County for the next decade – be adopted and take precedence over the 2009 Growth Management Strategy.
“On the whole, I’m pretty happy with the new plan. It probably reflects pretty well what our county residents want to see. I think it’s fairly disciplined in the approach it takes,” Sacuta said, adding if it were adopted, “then this council will actually have done not a bad job.”
Another area of concern for Sacuta is the County’s finances.
“I think we’ve managed to keep our taxes relatively level. Debt is going down although it’s going down for the wrong reasons. And we’ve fixed one of our (the County’s) levies,” he said about the recently-approved updated water and wastewater levy that charges based on usage.
Sacuta said there are three other levies he wants to see council update that are currently too low and don’t recover costs.
“The transportation levy is just ridiculously low. It assumes that the County is going to develop 600,000 acres and that’s just outrageous, which means the levy is just too low right now to recover costs. It also doesn’t include a lot of the bridges and interchanges that we know we’re going to have to build moving forward.”
He added that a stormwater levy needs to be put in place to help mitigate drainage problems, particularly in Bearspaw.
He said he also thinks a levy should be created to recover costs for soft infrastructure projects, which includes recreational facilities and fire stations.
Under section 648 of the Municipal Government Act, municipalities are only able to impose levies on hard infrastructure projects such as roads, pathways and trails, and water, stormwater and wastewater facilities.
“It’d be nice to put in a levy for that stuff that we know we’re going to need. And existing residents shouldn’t subsidize that. If new developments require fire stations, then the new development should really pay for it,” said Sacuta.
“And if we don’t start collecting the money for these kinds of things now, we’re not going to have the money when we need it.”
Sacuta said another area of focus that stems from his 2010 election platform is to continue “improving council’s process to make it more fair and more transparent.”
“I think we’re making sound progress but we still need to make more,” he said, adding that he wants to see all council members sign a code of ethics.
The Bearspaw Area Structure Plan also needs to be updated, said Sacuta.
“There’s been a lot of changes here that aren’t reflected in that plan. The biggest one is the Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park. That’s going to have a big influence on what kind of development goes in around it. So at the very least we need to address that, and we need to check with all the residents to see if they’ve got any changes they’d like to see in terms of what the community should look like.”
Another important thing to Sacuta is to see high voter turn-out at the October election.
“In the last election, Bearspaw had one of the highest turnouts of voters in the County. I’d like to see us do that well again. Obviously, I’d like residents vote for me, but even if they’re not voting for me, then I’d like to see a good turn-out so that provides a clear direction of which candidate they’re supporting and what direction they’d like to see the County go based on that candidate.”
Sacuta’s said his interest in politics stems from his love for Rocky View County.
“I’ve travelled internationally for 20 years doing contract work, and I have to tell you, this is one of the best places in the world to live,” he said.
“My feeling is that we don’t have to turn it into suburbia or urban development or anything else. I think we can develop Rocky View in a measured manner that means that it continues to be a great place for people to live.”
