COCHRANE— Life-long Cochrane resident Kaitlin Chamberlain is the latest candidate to enter the election for a seat on Cochrane’s town council.
Chamberlain said she has been proud to call Cochrane home and enjoys the close-knit community feeling of the town. As well, she has enjoyed watching the town grow and develop over the years.
“I really love this community,” she said. “It’s a really nice place to grow up and live in. Everything is interconnected with these great pathways and you can basically get to every community on the Great Trail that they’ve implemented through town. I have no complaints about living here. Especially with all of the great retail businesses that have come to town, there’s a lot of amenities available.”
Chamberlain joins Bruce Townley, Brandon Cruze, Dan Cunin, Paul Singh, Samantha Nickerson and Todd Muir in the race for a town councillor seat. The municipal election takes place on Oct. 18.
Chamberlain said she is running on a community-based and budget-focused platform.
“I’ve been here my whole life and it has taken a bit of a different turn. It used to be a really tight-knit community and now since there are so many people living here it seems like voices are being lost, so I just want to give people someone to talk to and listen,” she said.
Her focus as a councillor, she said, will be to ensure that Cochrane is fiscally on track, avoiding debt and prioritizing communicating the Town’s money moves clearly to the public.
“Budget, budget, budget,” she said. “I just want to make sure that everyone understands where their tax money is going, what grants we’re getting and how we’re making that work for Cochrane.”
Chamberlain has a background managing budgets for her own company, GEI Regulatory, which she has operated for eight years.
GEI Regulatory did reporting for Canadian Natural Resources Limited, one of Alberta’s largest oil and gas companies, as well as a few smaller oil companies.
As a business owner, she was responsible for budgeting and accounting, she said, as well as the day-to-day services she provided for her clients.
She said she has no major issues with the direction Town Council is currently moving in and is excited about some of the projects, including the expansion of roads to alleviate traffic woes, and the Horse Creek Sports Park that is currently in development.
One thing she would like to pursue is expanding the Town’s animal husbandry bylaws, she said, given the recent updates to bylaws in Calgary and Okotoks that now allow for backyard chickens to be kept.
“Some of the animal husbandry bylaws in town, they should be updated. I am a beekeeper and I do love my hobby. Not everyone needs to love it, but I feel like the people who are a little worried about it or don’t like it, they should have the same respect. I feel like there should be something put in place where, if people are going to keep bees … That everyone is heard and that there are bylaws in place that take both sides into account,” she said.
Chamberlain said her top priority as a councilor would be to focus on the public that she serves.
“It would be to listen to people and make sure that everyone is comfortable and that everyone is happy with how the money is being spent in town and what projects are being put through,” she said. “I’ve been here forever and I think I could actually help and it would be really nice to give people a voice.”
