Four of the five candidates running in the Town of Irricana’s May 17 byelection participated in a public forum on May 7, where town residents heard responses to a list of questions before they had a chance to ask some of their own.
The five individuals who are seeking a seat on Town council include Nathaniel Fleming, Stephanie Katelnikoff, Jeremie Page, Julie Sim, as well as Jim Bryson, who was not present at the forum.
Roughly 40 people attended the event at the K.I.K. Seniors Centre in Irricana, and the forum was also live-streamed online.
The event was organized by resident Lieke van Arendonk, while resident Rita Smith served as moderator, posing questions submitted by the audience and online viewers.
The byelection seeks to fill a vacancy on council left by former mayor Frank Friesen, who announced his resignation in March. Friesen moved to Beiseker, which disqualified him from maintaining his council seat in Irricana.
Questions touched on topics ranging from lowering the cost of living in Irricana to attracting businesses and the personal goals of each candidate.
When an attendee at the forum asked what the candidates think Irricana needs to change, not every candidate had a chance to respond amid the back-and-forth chatter in the hall.
“Most importantly, the town needs to regrow its sense of community. The way things seem now, we seem very divided,” said candidate Jeremie Page. “We have differing opinions of what needs to be done or should be done and what we want to have done. We need to be able to get back together and talk through our differences.”
One resident responded that in his 35 years of living in the community, he had never noticed the current division until the byelection campaign started. He later added that posts on social media play a big role in that division.
Candidate Nathaniel Fleming argued the community’s division didn’t necessarily stem from the election and that people in town need to get back to working with each other.
While candidate Julie Sim shared that she loves the Town of Irricana and its sense of community, she noted communication between Town council and residents must improve.
“We need to have a respectful environment where we can work as a team and we need to get stuff done,” she said.
When there is a complaint to council, the change that is needed is that they have to listen, she added.
When asked about their top three goals if elected, Katelnikoff, Page, and Sim all brought up increasing transparency and improving communication between the Town administration, Council, and the public.
Katelnikoff said big goals are great, but that they should be built on a solid foundation, which is currently in need of some repair. She added that small things to improve transparency like making check-listing public again and keeping council meetings available for viewing on the website afterwards will slowly build back that foundation of trust.
“All the other things that the other candidates mentioned are great goals. If we work on a foundation under them, they're a lot more likely to be successful,” she said.
Aside from increasing transparency and understanding, Page said he hopes to see the community come back together and host events and initiatives.
“I also believe we should be developing our businesses, attracting new businesses,” he said, as well as advocating for a school in the community on a section of land already zoned for a school.
Sim’s main goals included attracting larger business to the community and figuring out what the residents of Irricana want, as well as following the municipal act appropriately.
Attracting light industry and providing jobs to encourage people to live in Irricana was also a main goal for Fleming.
“What drives people here would be steady work and the sort of places that have steady work would be light industry, [like] an old-age home,” he said.
One of Fleming’s main interests was fixing the Town’s record-keeping and bylaw documentation. He also mentioned improving the signage along the highway to encourage people to come into the community and visit local businesses.
When asked what candidates would do to attract businesses to the community, Katelnikoff said in order to be more attractive for business development, the Town must look at increasing its customer base. This could be done by looking at residential development, she said.
Fleming agreed that Irricana doesn’t have the population size to support a lot of new businesses but that Irricana does already have a lot of local amenities.
“You need something that’s going to actually encourage people to come in and unfortunately, that’s going to have to be working with some larger employer and that’s where you get into the sticky part of what do you want town to be? What do you want in here?” Fleming questioned.
Sim and Page added that the Town must be open to working with businesses and making it easy for them to set up shop in Irricana.
Another question focused on what council could do to lower the cost of living in Irricana.
Page said he doesn’t know where to trim fat from the budget until he has a chance to look at it, noting that using taxes in the right places is more important than cutting taxes.
Katelnikoff expressed the most costly thing to the Town of Irricana is human error and bad decisions, which would be reduced by investing in training the right people and focusing on personal development.
Fleming agreed the most important issue is long-term investment in staffing to run the municipality smoothly.
“Right now, we're losing a lot of money in litigation from what I know. We'd love to cut down on that,” he said.
Fleming and Sim both noted that bus fees are out of council’s hands, as well as the development of a local school. Sim did agree that investing in people provides long-term savings.
“Sometimes you have to spend money to make money and if we get the proper people in the proper places and work as a team, then we're going to get a lot further,” she said.
Other topics candidates discussed included accessibility around the community, their take on a green bin program, the Meadowlark Trail project, growth of the community, as well as how to support buying local by lowering costs.
Voting for the byelection will take place May 17 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Irricana Town Office at 222-2nd Street. Advanced polls are open May 10 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 pm.m and 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Town Office.
