After One Year

When I was elected to city council in 2005, it was and still is my personal mission to help make Merritt become a healthy place and that people from all over will want to make this place their home. It has been a pleasure joining this council and we seem to work well together. We have a very well balanced municipal government here in Merritt and I am proud to be part of the team.

As with almost every other community in this province, we have similar issues. We as Merritt council are working to find solutions to such issues as poor air quality, high-risk youth, poverty, a struggle with drugs and alcohol, a need for more ambulance services as well as a change of services from Interior Health.

In council, we struggle with these issues, one-by-one. We have brought motions to the Union of BC Municipalities including "smoke free BC in public places", mountain pine beetle concerns, Gateway 286 promoting economic development in Merritt as the hub of the Interior and also a motion to increase social assistance amounts for families in need.

We will be working with the community to address youth concerns in the very near future. I feel very positive involving all youth service providers in this matter; as it takes a community to raise a child. On another note, we have implemented a trucking and parking bylaw, which will increase the efficiency of this community. We are in the process of making Merritt the best place to live.

We have seen some really positive success stories here in Merritt over the past year including some of the issues I raised in my campaign. I wanted to see more capacity in this town for elderly care, such as more long-term care beds, more beds in the hospital, etc. We have a new seniors complex now and Tradewinds low rental units will be opening again. Also, there will be 24 new residential care beds opening by 2008. It is possible that Merritt might see 8 new beds at the hospital as well.

In terms of economic development, some of the success stories that we have seen and I have supported include new choices for local shopping such as Urban Cabin, Liquidation World and Walmart. In terms of dining choices here in our city, we have seen in the past year such restaurants as the Smoking Barrel Steakhouse, Boston's Pizza, Domino's Pizza and the Merritt Lodge Bar-B-Que Steak House open their doors to the public.

In regards to water conservation, we have achieved a two percent reduction in water useage. We are working towards a ten percent reduction and are hoping to achieve this in the coming new year.

A new committee that I have volunteered for is called Measuring Up. It is about increasing employment of persons with disabilities in British Columbia's communities by ten percent by the year 2010.

In the past year of serving Merritt as City Councillor, I can truly say that I have learned a lot about municipal government processes. I hope that Merritt will continue to improve as we work towards making Merritt a healthy community in 2007 and beyond.