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, Andrew Black:
Check out the rest of our local elections coverage here.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: Andrew Black, thanks for joining us.
ANDREW BLACK: Thanks for having me.
CHMA: For those who may not already know you, tell us a bit about yourself.
AB: Sure. I was born in Amherst in 1975. My mom is a Hicks from the Bayfield-Sackville area. And my father is a Black from the Springhill-Amherst area. And when I was five months old, my parents moved away to Alberta—during the maritime migration of the 1970s—for work, and I lived there until I was 10 years old. Then my parents decided to move back to Sackville in 1985, for work, and to be close to my extended family. So that was great for me because I moved to a small town from a big city, which was wonderful.
So I attended Marshview, and then I graduated from Tantramar High School in 1993. And then after that, I went to Mount Allison and graduated with a BA in 1997. And then my girlfriend at the time, who is also from Sackville, and now my wife, she went to school in the States. So when I was 21, I moved away and lived with her in the US. So we lived in Boston for a short time, and Stanford, Connecticut for a little while. And then we found ourselves back in Canada, in Toronto, where we lived for about seven+ years or so. We moved back to Sackville about 14ish years ago, to be closer to our family. And we wanted to start a family of our own and didn’t really want to do it in a big city.
So I now have three kids. Phaedra, who is my oldest daughter, she’s 12. Roman, my son, is nine. And little Margot our daughter is almost three.
My work experience… I’ve been in retail management for most of my career. So a lot of people in town know me from managing the Jean Coutu pharmacy in Sackville for many years. But I also started two small businesses with some friend-partners. I co-owned and operated those businesses in town, Mr. Movie, which was a video rental business, and Black Bowser Comics, which was a comic shop. Those businesses closed down, unfortunately, because of financial constraints. But I now work with Blugenics Innovations, which people in Sackville know as Karen Phytoplankton. I’ve been with this company for almost three years.
I’ve served one term on Council and one extra year for the pandemic. And now I’m looking to run again.
CHMA: What factored into your decision to run again this year?
AB: Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the last five years of being on Council. It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, serving the community. And I’ve just really loved it.
I feel like in the last five years we as council, along with staff, have accomplished a lot. And I want to continue to be part of that process, making decisions that will benefit the community and the people who live here.
CHMA: Do you have issues that you’re hoping to highlight in your campaign?
AB: I guess so. I have been really pleased with things the last five years. So there really isn’t a lot that I’m running on.
When I ran for council in 2016, people had asked what my platform was and at that time, I said that I didn’t really have a platform. And the reason I said that is because I knew I was going to be one of eight councillors, and so to make promises that I might not be able to deliver felt wrong to me.
I was hoping that if I had something that I wanted to accomplish, that I could convince my colleagues to vote in favour of whatever I was proposing, and then that would be wonderful. But I didn’t promise anything necessarily. What I did promise was that I would make decisions to the best of my ability, based on material that was presented and doing further research when needed. And always keeping in mind to make, or try to make, the best decision for the municipality as a whole. And I guess that’s what I’m currently running on as well.
That being said, there are certain things that I’m interested in—either concerns that I have or that Im passionate about looking forward over the next four years.
And one thing that’s really pressing and we’ll have a lot of work to do over the next four years is municipal reform. And this is something that’s been talked about for years with various governments in the province. And it’s never really… nothing has really changed. People have tried and failed. Sometimes those attempts were fairly valid. Other times they were sort of flat attempts. This current government is trying it again. They have a pretty strong minister of local governance and municipal reform. They changed his title to actually include that in there. And so if that continues on and the province does a good job of that, it’s going to present some significant challenges for Sackville, and municipalities, local service districts, incorporated areas that are around us and throughout the province as well. So that’ll be something that’ll be pretty big.
And then we’ve got healthcare reform from the province, which, it’s been cooking for the last few years. It’s been on the back burner a little bit during COVID, but that’s going to be a huge impact on Sackville. And anyone in this town knows how much our hospital means to this community and the surrounding communities. And we’re going to need to fight tooth and nail for everything that we have, and everything that we possibly can have with our hospital. So that’ll be a huge challenge as well.
And then education reform too, is something we talked about a couple of years ago, and then it sort of stalled as well. But that’s most likely something we’re going to deal with over the next four years. We have three schools, great schools in town. All three of them have some significant needs, Marshview, I would say, more than others. So that’s going to factor into some education reform. As well we’ve talked about Schools 2020 over the last couple of years, which is community-based learning. So Sackville will have a significant part to play with that.
And then, of course, economic development, and the recovery from COVID. And what that looks like for our town. In my opinion, there’s a massive need for a connection between the town council, mayor, BIA, for example, the Chamber of Commerce, and you know, the rest of services and businesses in the town. And that will be something that will be an immediate concern, and will be ongoing for years.
CHMA: When you think about the most recent term on council, what are you most proud of in that time? And what if anything, would be something you’d like to change?
AB: Well, I remember again, when I ran in 2016, we had a debate at the Civic Center. And the moderator gave each [candidate] about five minutes to give sort of a pitch or a platform to let people know what they were running about. I took that opportunity to tell a story about driving around Sackville, and noticing the beauty of it, and issues that I felt needed to be dealt with. And one of the big things in there was Lorne Street.
Lorne Street before I got on council was awful. The street was in terrible condition. The sidewalks were in terrible condition. Some of the green space that was on that road was in really bad shape. It looked like it was a forgotten section of the town. Which was weird because it’s so close to being downtown. And arguably, it is an extension of the downtown core.
And I have been incredibly pleased and proud of the work that’s been done on Lorne Street. And then I guess the retention pond as well. So the stormwater and floodwater mitigation that we’ve been able to accomplish on Lorne Street and the beautification of that road has been significant, and I think is a wonderful thing that council and staff have been able to do in these five years.
And then of course, the climate change issue… We’ve been able to do this to kind of play our part in addressing climate change and climate change adaptation. And the retention pond, which I’ve heard wonderful things from the community about, that it’s a functional piece of infrastructure in that it holds water when we have these big storm events, and it has a wonderful walking path and plant life and and wildlife in there. That’s so close to downtown and so noticeable, which is also fantastic. So that’s something I’m significantly proud of.
And if I could say one more thing, is that okay? That’s something, you know, very tangible, right? And very noticeable. But the other thing that I’ll say is I’ve been really pleased… I want to say that a lot of this stuff is staff and council, you know, coming together. But I’m really pleased with the financial position that the town is in currently and that it’s been in over the over the last five years.
And it’s something that if a lot of people in town don’t pay that much attention to the budget process—and it can be very long and drawn out, but it’s vitally important—they might not know. But the town has been incredible with protecting the purse of the public, and doing a good job of being financially sound. So the last five years, year over year, we’ve been putting a significant amount of money into our long term debt for the town. A couple of those years has been over a million dollars, which is just incredible. And then we’ve had surpluses every single year in our general and utility fund. So, we’re having money left over the end of the year to put into these into these funds, which is, again, commendable. And it puts the town in a great financial position, not just for the last five years before for the future as well. So I’ve been I’ve been really pleased about that as well.
CHMA: Was there anything that, looking back, you would like to change?
AB: Not really. I mean, I’ve been pleased with the way the council has functioned generally over the last five years. I’ve been really pleased with the relationship with town staff. I think we have a fantastic town management and staff. I think we have an amazing crew in town, from public works to town hall, to the rink, to parks and rec, the fire department. We have really good people in this town.
The one thing that I would say is… I wish that it had happened more during my time on council, that the mayor and the eight of us would could come together and be a little more cohesive. Not necessarily in our decisions or our discussions, because a difference of opinion is absolutely necessary, and that’s healthy in the democratic process that we have. But to have moments where we could sit down and discuss together, in a cordial way, things that we believed in, things that were important for the community, just general discussions on the future of Sackville… There are lots of municipalities, from speaking with mayors and councillors and CAOs from other municipalities across the province, this is a common occurrence, that people do this. They sit down and they just have a chat about what each of them is interested in and their beliefs. And those things change while you’re on council. I mean, the beliefs and what you what you want to see in your town change from time to time as you’re on council. And it would be nice to have those opportunities. And we didn’t really. A lot of that stuff was sort of just left, and I had wished that we had done a bit more of that.
CHMA: Interesting. Is there anything else that you’d like people in Sackville to know before I let you go?
AB: I don’t think there’s there’s too much more to say. I think that most people in Sackville know who I am, and are probably familiar with my time on council. I hope that they see that I’ve been doing the best that I can making decisions that I feel are right for the community and in our municipality. And I hope that they can see that my time on council has been valuable, and has shaped me over the last five years. And I hope that the next four years will be even better knowing what I know now, and I’ll be able to continue to serve the community in the best way I possibly can.
CHMA: All right, Andrew. Well, thanks for taking the time today. I appreciate it.
AB: Thanks for having me.
