Hunter says infrastructure, tax restraint top priorities in Rosetown byelection

By Ian MacKay

“Infrastructure and taxes are my two main concerns,” said Jason Hunter, a candidate for council in Wednesday’s byelection.

Local residents who have lived in town for at least the last three months and are 18 or older may vote at the town office from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

“I don’t know that we can lower (property taxes), necessarily,” but he’d try “to hold the line as best we can,” Hunter said. That also means avoiding decisions that create “a mess to clean up” in the future, he said. “I don’t want to have us borrow out of a problem.”

He wants council to consider alternatives to the local improvement program in paying for new pavement, after residents along “just about every street that we’ve wanted to pave” during the past three years have “petitioned it out,” he said.

“I know there are other jurisdictions where they do their paving differently,” Hunter said, suggesting that the town could pay for new pavement in one year, then skip the next two or three years. The town can’t simply double property taxes to cover the expense, he said.

He supported the idea from a few years ago of a recreation multiplex but noted that the AGT Centre and the civic centre are in fairly good structural condition.

“I’d hate to see the town in a position where we’re forced to replace (the civic centre), because when you wait for that infrastructure debt to come due, you’ve got to pay whatever it costs,” Hunter said.

He’s served on council and on other boards and is “one of the senior leaders” with Prosperity Credit Union after working in information technology for about 30 years, he said.

“I’m used to making decisions,” he said. “My whole job revolves around taking complex problems and systems, trying to sort them out so that we can organize them, and make a good decision and a plan to move forward.”

In his new role there, his task is “to take all of our systems and make sure that we are using them efficiently and they connect in a good way,” he said.

“Let’s not make an emotional decision because something’s distressing or upsetting,” Hunter said. “Let’s look at it, figure out why this is happening or what the root cause is. Let’s address that.”