LETHBRIDGE, AB. – The race for the mayor’s chair in this city just a got a lot more interesting.
Former City Councillor Bridget Mearns is throwing her hat into the ring. If elected, she would become Lethbridge’s first-ever woman mayor.
Mearns says she wants to be a mayor that unites people in the community and feels her experience serving two terms on previous Councils puts her in a position to do just that.
“I watched the last council and I listened to the people of this city who reached out to me to tell me they were tired of the divisive council, tired of the progress-slowing division it’s created in our city. They want change, they want things to get done,” Mearns said in a speech at the Galt Museum Thursday afternoon.
Mearns says she shares a vision of a Lethbridge that works for everyone and builds bridges across the issues that divide us. “A vision that needs a new and different way of building our city. The same old won’t do anymore.”
Mearns had been City Council two previous terms, deciding not to run in the last election in 2017, but feels now is the time to get back to running for local elected office in the city again.
She touched on working collaboratively on issues like homelessness and the drug crisis, stressing the importance of unity, not division.
“I think it’s time we have a mayor that builds bridges, that can bring us together. I don’t have all the answers, but I believe we do collectively. I think we have to foster that and have a leader who knows how to do that. We’re not going to be able to solve the challenges we have alone as a city, so we’re going to have to reach out to other orders of government. That’s going to take a mayor that has the respect of their council as well as a non-partisan relationship with other orders of government,” said Mearns.
Mearns has been the Executive Officer for the BILD Lethbridge organization for the past few years and also earned her Master of Business Administration during that time.
With Mearns’ name on the ballot, that makes six people vying to be Lethbridge Mayor on October 18th.
