Paul Crierie believes that common sense can prevail if he is elected to Cochrane town council.
Crierie said he has been busy getting a feel for resident's concerns since putting his name in to run for town council a couple weeks ago.
Many of the same issues people are bringing up, Crierie said, are ones he noticed have been sitting on the back burner for a number of years.
Now that his children are grown, he's stepping in to get involved.
“I’ve watched the population skyrocket in Cochrane and I’ve watched the infrastructure lag way, way behind,” he said.
Crierie said council has been spending time talking about projects that may be over their heads, like the conceptual river wave park on the Bow River that was brought forth for discussion by the Cochrane Tourism Association in November last year.
“The price tag of a $10 million dollar wave park in the middle of the river, when we don’t have money for pedestrian overpasses and bike paths and the infrastructure is so far behind," he said. "I just think that to even be discussing it is a ridiculous concept. You know what we could do with $10 million dollars in this town? We can improve it. There are so many things we could do. I would like to see skating rinks in every community and more dog walking parks and off-leash areas.”
Crierie said his family bought one of the first dozen houses in Sunset Ridge when they moved from Calgary in 2007.
“There’s been a lot of talk about Sunset getting an off-leash area, but years pass by and no one can give an answer as to when it’s going to happen,” he said. “If I want to run my dog when I get home at the end of the day, I have to get dressed up, get back in my car with my dog and drive into town – causing more traffic.”
Twenty years working as a transit operator for the City of Calgary has taught him about managing congestion while improving connectivity, he said.
Crerie believes Cochrane’s COLT on-demand transit system that was brought in in 2019, needs further tuning to cater to the people who really need to use it.
“On Saturdays the transit shuts down at 3:30 in the afternoon, on Sunday there’s no services and on statutory holidays there’s no services,” Crierie said. “It is usually lower income people who have to work on these days that need transit. It then forces all these people to take taxis. Well, the taxis here are probably twice as much as they are in Calgary.”
A Town of Cochrane bylaw regulating cab use was amended in 2019 to increase the starting rate for each cab to $4.10 and $2.52 per kilometre, as compared to Calgary’s average cost of about $3.80 to start a ride and $1.67 per kilometre.
Crierie also said it does not serve the people of Cochrane, especially lower income earners, to allow town council to vote on their pay increases.
In 2019, a public committee recommended councillor salaries increase from an average $34,285 to $41,832 to better align with councillor salaries in surrounding communities with similar populations, such as Airdrie, Okotoks and Leduc.
The motion was later brought up for another vote by councillor Alex Reed who argued against the idea that they should adjust their salaries during a time where some citizens were hurting financially, pre-pandemic.
Mayor Jeff Genung and councillors Morgan Nagel and Patrick Wilson sided with him while councillors Susan Flowers, Marni Fedeyko and Tara McFadden wanted the increase to stand. The issue will likely be revisited by whoever serves on the next council.
Crierie said that bumping up the pay grade for what is ultimately a part-time job attracts people to the job who may not have residents’ best interests at heart.
“To me, it doesn’t matter what other town councillors make, it has to do with what’s an appropriate amount, and a town council position is a part-time job,” he said. “I think that $42,000 for a part-time job is probably more than a lot of people in this town make. The people working at Tim Horton’s, Walmart or McDonald’s are making a lot less than $42,000 a year for a full-time job. For a part-time councillor to be making that is a bit excessive in my opinion.”
