Although Councillor Albert Hoglund is seeking his tenth term as a Kimberley City Councillor, he doesn’t necessarily think people should vote for him just because he is experienced.
“I think you try to do your best for the community no matter what your level of experience is,” he said. “I’m running again because I just enjoy doing it. I don’t mind all the meetings. I feel like I’m representing 6600 people at every meeting.
“I’ve been retired since 2001 and I feel I have the time and energy to continue on.”
Hoglund says that he is certainly aware of all the talk about fiscal responsibility.
“If you want to talk about fiscal responsibility, we are the only level of government that has to have a balanced budget.
“All we can do at budget time, is to ask our managers to prioritize the projects they’d like to see done.
“I don’t think anyone wants to see taxes go through the roof but in order to maintain a level of service, it must be paid for by taxes.”
This past term, Council had to deal with a number of large projects, such as the flume rehab, but Hoglund says that infrastructure has been on Council’s radar as long as he has been a part of it.
“We are no different than any other city in Canada in terms of aging infrastructure. Before Kimberley was incorporated, Cominco looked after everything and they put in what was sufficient for the day, and now a lot of it has to be replaced, which we are doing year by year.
“Our job as Council is to try to keep taxes as low as possible. Nobody wants to see taxes go up and everything is looked at in terms of operation expenses. We do as much infrastructure work as our tax revenue will allow us to do and this past Council did increase water and sewer rates to try to build up some extra money for that.”
Hoglund says he would look forward to seeing the Sun Mine come to fruition and also wants to see the completion of the flume project and continue to serve all of Kimberley.
“I don’t belong to any special interest groups. My view is for all the citizens of Kimberley.”