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Election over, job not done for former candidate

Dear editor: I thought I would write to the community to thank them for voting, to thank all who donated their time/effort/money, to thank all those who were willing to talk and debate ideas with me and to thank all the candidates for offering their

Dear editor:

I thought I would write to the community to thank them for voting, to thank all who donated their time/effort/money, to thank all those who were willing to talk and debate ideas with me and to thank all the candidates for offering their talents to Cochrane.

In this election, Cochrane was given a number of wide ranging choices in candidates with equally wide ranging skill sets and opinions. To all the candidates, from one pundit to another, well done!

I’ve now given myself a week to deal with my disappointment and to try to figure out why the items I heard that were important to you during hundreds of conversations starting in February failed to have me elected.

The other big question for this election was, why the voting numbers dropped from 39 per cent in 2010 to only 33 per cent in 2013. There have now been articles in the paper questioning this very issue. Most of these articles have been critical of the people who did not vote and included the general statement of, ‘you don’t have the right to complain if you didn’t vote’. While I share the frustration of low voter turnout, I simply refuse to believe that people don’t want to let their voices be heard, not when I had so many people so willingly talk to me. I refuse to let this silent majority grow and I refuse to give up; my children’s future is just too important.

I take this opportunity to plead to council not to make shortsighted, ideological-based decisions. One such target would be transit. While I’m not oblivious to the fact that all three candidates that expressed immediate support for transit were not voted in, there were many people who did want transit and no one said they were against transit. Transit came down to two issues; could Cochrane afford it and would enough people use it?

Successful examples of public transit do exist in Airdrie and Canmore, both of which started programs with essentially the same size as Cochrane. Even Calgary started their transit system in the early 1900s with a population size similar to Cochrane. However, this time has long since passed and all I can do is plead with the present council to at least ensure that all future developments actively plan for transit sometime in the future. Failing to do this planning will needlessly add millions of dollars of additional capital costs when transit is revisited in the future. We are almost assured to lose the GreenTrip funding now, a decision that will already add millions of dollars in additional infrastructure costs; let’s not needlessly compound these costs by failing to plan for transit in the future.

I would also like to challenge council to take a definitive stand on what targets need to be achieved in order for them to support a phased in public transit system, starting with a ‘dial-a-bus’ system (the one reported to be most favored by most residents according to the most credible science to date).

But this campaign was never just about public transportation or myself; it was about your ideas and our future. Throughout this campaign it has been my conversations with you, the willingness of people to volunteer and the continued feedback I hear from people who motivated me. So this is what I’ve decided to do. I will keep my website (DanCuninForTownCouncil.com) and gmail account ([email protected]) active to talk with you, I will be walking around town continuing our conversations and I will be conducting a survey (surveymonkey.com/s/Q2HLJNX); all in the hopes of continuing our journey to ensure your needs are met and to untangle the mystery of why the majority of us did not vote.

Dan Cunin

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