Shawn Brander would like to improve the city's infrastructure and help with future planning if elected. (submitted photo/Shawn Brander)

By Dawson Thompson

City Council Candidate

Council candidate to focus on city infrastructure

Oct 20, 2020 | 1:00 PM

Shawn Brander grew up on a farm in the R.M. of Meadow Lake. He now instructs electricians at Northwest College and is seeking a seat on city council during the upcoming election.

“A big thing of mine is just to listen,” Brander told meadowlakeNOW. “We should be able to listen to citizens, employees, our neighbours. Just continue those great relations with everyone, always be open and accessible, people have great ideas they want to bring forward.”

Brander is running for council to bring a unique voice to the table. Based on his education, agricultural background, and work experience, he feels he can benefit the city if elected.

The areas his platform focuses on are engineering, planning, infrastructure, innovation, and technology.

“A big priority of mine is water sanitary, and storm infrastructure,” Brander added.

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When speaking with the locals, Brander said he found an array of concerns being brought up to bring to the table including high taxes, streets and sidewalks, water outages, and sewage issues.

“It’s a broad spectrum, but you could sum it to limiting the future rate of tax increases and having proper pre-planning and infrastructure work going on,” he said.

Brander supports further data collection and would like to see a predictive maintenance model implemented for the city. This would include graphic databases, and interactive maps showing underground infrastructure down to part numbers and dates installed. He believes this would help prioritize repairs to save money, prevent future outages, and help plan payments.

Another industry Brander will focus on if elected is parks and recreation. He believes there are ways to get more utilization from the arena and swimming pool.

“It would be great to see more ways to increase utilization, and find new ideas for those [buildings], as it is more cost effective to get more use out of what we already have,” Brander said.

“We have these great facilities, we just need more innovative ways to use them more effectively and make some more revenue from them.”

When speaking about drainage issues on the east side of the city, and new developments to help fix that issue Brander added there will be due-diligence in ensuring the new developments are done well to prevent further work needing to be done ‘after the fact.’

Advanced polls for the upcoming municipal election will be held Oct. 29 to Nov. 3 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at city hall and on Nov. 4 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The Lions Den in the tourism information building at 902 Ninth St. W.

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Dawson.thompson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: dawsonthompson8