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, Michael Tower:
Check out the rest of our local elections coverage here.
TRANSCRIPT:
CHMA: Mike tower, thank you so much for joining us.
MT: It’s a pleasure indeed, I thank you for the invite.
CHMA: So for those who might not already know you, tell us a bit about yourself.
MT: Well, I’m sure there’s not too many people that don’t know me, but I was born and raised in this town. I helped raise two beautiful kids. And I have four lovely grandkids also. And of course, I’ve recently retired from NB Liquor where a lot of people know me from, anyway. So now I have more time for council work.
CHMA: And how long have you served on council?
MT: I have 13 years on.
CHMA: So what factored into your decision to run again this year?
MT: Well, one reason is, because I’m now retired I have much more time to dedicate to the work for the town. And I do enjoy helping to make Sackville a better place to live. And of course, there’s always issues, always things to do. We have to, as far as I’m concerned, improve our communication with the people. We have Farmers Market and they need a permanent year-round home. And I think we also have to revisit the drive-thru issue, too, which helps our economic development. So I want to see if I can help with a solution to those issues.
CHMA: Okay. So you mentioned a few issues there. Do you want to elaborate a bit more on those issues, and how you’re talking about them during your campaign?
MT: Well, yes, when it comes to the communication, that’s a two-pronged issue for me. One is, with the loss of our Tribune Post over a year ago now, a lot of people, especially the ones without internet, they have no access to the regular flow of information. And a prime example is when things happen in the industrial park, if they don’t have an internet connection, they may not know something is happening not that far away from them. And so we have to find a way to communicate that with them.
And when it comes to transparency, which is the second prong, I think that council has to really open up the door for being more transparent about what we’re doing. And a prime example of that would be, you know, our council packages. You get a council package before our regular council meeting. And I think that you should also be getting the discussion package. You know, if they were released to you or to the public before the meeting, it gives them the chance to follow along better, and of course, would lead to concrete, quality questions that they can jump in on quicker.
So, the farmers market… I think it’s a mainstay of this community. I think we need it. It’s one of the heartbeats we’ve got pumping all the time, and we have to find a way to give them a permanent home. Whether it be downtown, which I think is probably the best location, the best thing is to try to find land. But I don’t think it has to be limited to that, and we have to find a way to implement a farmers market [permanent home] and I think we need to draw upon the public for more input on what else they would like to see in there. There has been talk of a gymnasium, but I think we need meeting spaces for certain groups, maybe a space for Live Bait Theatre to put on productions. I think we have to look at it in a broad spectrum and make a commitment. And I’d like to see it happen for the end of this year, you know, a firm direction for where we’re going, but I think we have to make sure we get community involvement on that one.
And when it comes to drive-thrus, it came up a couple of years back. But when it came up, it opened up drive-thrus to all areas and I was not in favour of jumping in and allowing more drive-thrus at exit 500 until we solve some issues, such as traffic flow, congestion, safety issues for people coming in and out of different places. But 506, we’ve invested in that. We had a consultant give us the plan of how we could do it. So now that we’ve improved the infrastructure, I think it’s time for us to look and see what kind of business we can put in there. And that means opening your eyes to develop more business, which would be more employment for the people in town.
CHMA: So you think you’d like to look at not necessarily changing the situation for exit 500, but for 506, you would.
MT: 506, indeed. Even at 500, there’s been conversation about the Pizza Delight building. For me, the Pizza Delight building would be a prime one because they’re well off the road, they’re down over, they have lots of land for parking, and also for putting a drive-thru. And people coming out of that one would come up into a regular flow of traffic. Unlike you have people coming out of Tim Hortons, you have people coming out of Irving, people coming out of McDonald’s, and you have Wright street coming up through there. So it’s really congested otherwise. So if you had another drive-thru very close to those locations, it would add to the complications, I think. But I’m definitely open to 506, and looking at how we could maybe even add the Pizza Delight area too. I mean, I’m not closed to that. I would love to have some feedback from the powers that be, that can look at that and give us an opinion on their side.
CHMA: Now, you mentioned you’ve been on council for… Did you say 13 years?
MT: Yes. It would have been 12, but we were extended by one.
CHMA: Right, you got an extra bonus year, whether you liked it or not.
MT: Oh, I didn’t mind that. When you work for the people, it’s a joy, really.
CHMA: During that time, what are you most proud of? And what, if anything, would be something you’d like to change?
MT: Well being Earth Day and I can start off with this one I suppose… The town hall, it’s a LEED silver construction, energy efficient, which falls in line with Earth Day. And then you look at our flood mitigation on Lorne Street phases one and two, which falls right in line with climate change also. And then we added the retention pond, which I thought was fantastic. I think we should still come up with a name for it because it is almost like another park. A lot of people are using it. I’ve had great feedback. I talked to a gentleman who was from Manitoba, he and his wife were down there and thought it was just so beautiful. They were impressed and wanted me to make sure I knew that the pictures they had taken of the place would be shared with their people in Manitoba. So I said, awesome. Tourism’s always good.
But then you can add to that… We have the Bill Johnstone Memorial Park, which I think is is one of our gems. We’ve done continuous improvements at the Waterfowl Park. And tied in with that, too, I would say that I’m quite proud of the fact that the town has a great partnership with the Rotary Club, which again, is a valuable gem to this town. And we’ve managed to obtain funds and support from them on some projects. So I think that’s a positive focus that Rotarians are thinking that we’re doing good things, and they have a heart involved to help support those issues. I think that’s awesome.
In other ones was I’m super proud of—thank you, Michael Beal for this—is that we’ve maintained a financial focus. And for now, the great thing is that we are financing our own capital projects. And you can’t tell me that’s not good for a community. I don’t know how many are out there in this province that can actually say the same thing. We’re doing it, and I’m very happy with that kind of progress.
CHMA: Now is there anything that you’d like to change looking back?
MT: I find it hard… I try not to focus on a lot of negative things. And some things may not be negative, it may be… Well I’ll give an example. The abattoir. I think the abattoir was a great thing to have come into town. My issue with that was I didn’t think it should be in an industrial park. You know, it’s very close to residential areas. I thought it should have been agricultural land, because when I went looking, that’s the way it was in so many provinces. And I thought, well, the people that live near that way could have their quality of life affected. And and I didn’t think it was right, that we should put them under that pressure.
Having said that, council decided, yes, we’re going to do it. And I accept the will of council. I don’t have a problem with that. Because that’s the way the process should work. I spoke for the people there and my argument wasn’t quite strong enough to convince council, so I move on and accept the will of council. I think it’s important that anybody on council should have the same attitude towards it.
CHMA: All right, Mike, is there anything else you’d like people in Sackville to know?
MT: Well, sure. I think Sackville is making good gains and heading in the right direction. And I would like to help them continue that process. I would like to see them invest more in economic development. I think we need someone totally dedicated to it. I don’t think it should be divided into anything else. If you’re doing economic development, it should be economic development. And in conjunction with that, I would love to see a community business advisory committee set up, to really help that one person find ways, means and ideas. We have a lot of good business people in this town. And some of them are retired or semi-retired. And I’m sure they would like to help this town out.
I tried many years ago to establish an entrepreneur program. I had the government half on side. They were very interested in it. And I had two local business people who were willing to be involved with the program, one was willing to put up $5,000 into it. And so I would like to see that revisited and see if we can pick that up off the ground. Because I think that’s how we can make huge gains in economic development.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t accept a company coming in and saying we want to put a warehouse in here for this or that. I wouldn’t be against it. But I think in the meantime, we have to work, whether you call it the low hanging fruit or not, but that’s one way we could move forward on economic development.
Other than that, I think we’ve got our other issues, as already mentioned, going forward. And as I go out and about I’ve been talking to people about that, and been getting good feedback, positive feedback. So I would like to be back on council to help achieve some or even all of these things along the way. I enjoy listening to the people, and I don’t mind taking voices forward to sort of argue their view, and present it to council to think about. And then it’s up to council at that point, to work on the rest.
And I think I have a good working relationship with this council. I think we all work pretty well together. So I would like another opportunity to carry on some of these projects. I’d like to see them come to fruition.
CHMA: Thanks very much for your time today, I appreciate it.
MT: You’re most welcome. I thank you for let me have the chance to voice this. I appreciate it immensely.
