Municipal election season is upon us. Barring any pandemic tragedies, on May 10 Sackville residents will be heading to the polls to cast votes for the next group of people to represent them at town council. In an effort to help inform you about who your candidates are, CHMA news is speaking with all 12 council and two mayoralty candidates in the coming weeks.
This time we speak with council candidate, and current incumbent, Allison Butcher:
Check out the rest of our local elections coverage here.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: Allison butcher, thanks for joining us… For those who might not already know you, tell us a bit about yourself.
ALLISON BUTCHER: So, I’m Allison Butcher, I was born and raised in Sackville. My partner Andy Wilson was as well. And we did like a lot of our youth does, we left in our early 20s and went off to seek our fame and fortune. Neither of which happened, but we returned, as again also happens.
So I have been back in Sackville for about 25 years now. As I said, I am married and I have two children—two girls, a 16 year old daughter and an almost 13 year old daughter. So they’re students at Marshview and Tantramar.
I am a preschool teacher. I work at Playschool here in town, which is a part time preschool program. And I’ve been here since 2003. I’ve been a teacher my entire adult life. And my husband runs his own construction business here in town.
And I have been a councillor for the past five years.
CHMA: Okay. Five years on council, with one unplanned year, I guess.
AB: Right.
CHMA: What factored into your decision to run again this year?
AB: Well, I originally ran because I thought it was something I wanted to prove to my daughters was important, when you are a part of a community you shouldn’t just be taking and taking. We’ve always experienced so many fabulous things in the way of programming and activities and things within our community.
So five years ago, that’s why I did. And I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed being a part of the municipal process. I have, weirdly enough, some may say, thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the council team that has looked after our community, guided our community, tried to assist with making decisions and and making sure that our town is moving forward in a positive way.
So since it was such a positive experience for me, I decided that I’d like to attempt to continue doing that.
CHMA: Thinking about that time on council. What would you say you’re most proud of during that time, and we’ll follow that up with what, if anything, would be something you’d like to change?
AB: I guess when I ran the first time, I had visions of what I would like to do, what I would like to change, what I would like to see happen. And one of the things that becomes apparent fairly quickly is that what I would like is a very small part of the whole parcel. It’s a team. It’s not what one person does, it’s being part of a group of eclectic individuals who all have different ideas and different desires and different hopes and different dreams.
I guess what I’m most proud of is that this group of eight councillors—and we’ve had changes over the past five years with people leaving and people coming in, our mayor is gone now and we have an acting mayor—I think what I’m most proud of is our ability to come together. And even though we have often had some big differences in our ideas and hopes, we’ve been able to discuss and decide and move forward.
So when I say what I’m most proud of, it’s not a single ownership thing. I’m most proud of what the mayor, council and the staff at town have been able to do over the past five years. The retaining ponds, that’s a big one. Our flood mitigation, which is still ongoing. There’s lots more to do with that. And there’s lots more that’s not just a municipal issue, but still lots to be done.
I’ve been proud of how we’ve managed to still do our business effectively during COVID. A lot of businesses and people have had to ‘pivot’ and I’m proud of the way that we’ve managed to do that. How we’ve managed to bring things online and you know, rolled with the changes and made adjustments as need be to hopefully still have transparency and community engagement through our meetings once they went virtual instead of in person.
A lot of people say that, you know, our town is not open to business, but we have had new businesses come. Over a year of this has been COVID, but you know, we’ve got the Cube, Terra Beata has come. We’ve got Cam Tran. We’ve had other businesses move in, move out. But I’m proud that Sackville is still a place where people want to be. And we’re finding more and more people are coming here, because we’re starting to be known as being a different kind of small town. It’s a great place to be. And I’m proud that I’ve been a part of that.
CHMA: Now, on the flip side, is there anything that you would like to see changed?
AB: I sort of said briefly that there’s so much more work to be done. But one of the things that is a little frustrating is that, you know, municipal government is just one cog in the wheel of government. There are a lot of things that are sort of out of our control, or are looked after at a provincial level or a federal level or are done in different government arms or bodies. So sometimes it’s frustrating, because whether it’s something I would like for us to be able to do, or whether the community and our constituents are wanting us to do it, when we realize that it’s sort of out wheelhouse, that’s frustrating.
I would like to be able to say that our municipal government has done a lot of lobbying through the Union of Municipalities for New Brunswick and other things.. Like with the hospital, gosh, we need to stay right on making sure that we keep our hospital. Municipally, that is not something we have a lot of control over. But I’m proud of what we as a community, the municipality included, did back a little over a year ago to keep our hospital and I think that council needs to continue moving forward with our community to make sure that things like that, that are not within the municipality’s wheelhouse, are still important to us and are still moved forward by us. So that people at other levels of government know what’s important to our community, even if it’s something that the municipality itself doesn’t have control over.
CHMA: Are there any issues, local issues, that you’re hoping to highlight during your campaign or during this campaign leading up to May 10?
AB: I guess one of the advantages, if you can say that, of being an incumbent, is that we sort of know what kind of stuff we’ve been talking about at council and are hoping to have moving forward. One of the big things we’ve been talking about a lot… our plan—it will be the plan of the new council, I suppose—but our hope is that moving forward, we will do a really in depth municipal reform. So that’s hopefully on the books, I would like to see that happen. And I hope that I will be a part of that.
There are always things that need need to be improved upon. And whether it’s something that I see from being on council and being a part of things or whether it’s something I’m made aware of because of citizens speaking up and saying that something needs to be done… You know, that’s where we need to head, when we know that there is an issue, then we need to figure out a way as council that we can move that forward and look into how things are done and how they should be done differently. And what it is that we can do as a municipality to make things work better.
CHMA: Is there anything else you’d like people in Sackville to know, Allison?
AB: I would like to think that people already see me as someone who has been willing to listen to all sides and not formulate an opinion really quickly. I think that the role of a councillor should be to listen, and then make the choice that is for the betterment of the community as a whole, and not for one group or one specific.
So, you know, I have things that are near and dear to my heart, education, environment, things like that. And I always look at things, or I try to look at things through that lens. But I also try to remember that I have been put in a position on council in order to address things for the community as a whole. And I think I’ve done that. And I would like to be given the chance to continue to do that.
CHMA: All right. Thanks so much, Allison. I appreciate your time.
AB: Thank you. I appreciate it.
