Connecting with the general community and engaging the next generation of voters is a priority for a candidate running for Lethbridge City Council.
Tevi Legge says she wants to engage the next generation of voters to get involved in the municipal democratic process by finding out who is running in the election and what their platforms for the city are.
“One of the things I talk about a lot is transparency, and I know that’s a word that gets thrown around and is easy to use, but it means something a little bit different for me. It means that if I get elected, I could actually bring an entire generation of voters along for the ride regarding getting more involved with the city and getting more involved with city municipal politics. I mean, first and foremost, getting them to vote,” Legge says. “Most of our voters in Lethbridge are seniors, and last election we only had a 34 per cent voter turnout and most of those voters were seniors.”
Legge says that by communicating with the next generation, it is important to connect with them on their level, whether that is leveraging social media and using plain English, instead of telling them to read the paper every day. Another priority when it comes to being transparent with the community is translating policy into what it means for taxpayers.
If voted onto the council, Legge says that she plans to use a wide variety of communication channels, including the phone, different social media channels and booking one-on-one meetings.
“The more people I can talk to and hear from, I think, the better as a Lethbridge city councillor. But I think just remaining open in regards to the lines of communication that are being used and remaining accessible to the public and the taxpayer base of Lethbridge.”
In her previous job, Legge says that she has managed large capital projects, but instead of for infrastructure, it was for technology, and during the project she had to manage a budget of hundreds of thousand of dollars. She explains that when working on these types of projects, decision-making becomes really important because it is important to invest money in something that is gonna create a return on the investment.
“I think anything that we’re gonna be investing in from a city perspective needs to have a business model from a functionality perspective to demonstrate how it’s gonna return on our investment back into the community. And what we did, the practice that we actually took in my prior life in financial services was we would business case these scenarios in great detail and do financial forecasting in great detail and business case the scenario of success and the scenario of, well, what would this look like if it didn’t work out?”
When it comes to concerns about affordability in the city, Legge says, with raising a family with two young boys, she understands how expensive it is to raise a family and live in Lethbridge.
“When I think about lowering taxes, before I could commit to that, I would actually need to get into the city council and get into the documentation and just understand how all of the tax dollars are being spent. If there’s any way for us to gain efficiencies internally at the city, that could essentially then in turn lower tax rates.”
“I know that a portion of our property taxes that get paid to the city is taken and given to the Ministry of Education right off the top, and so there’s nothing we can do about that. But, what we could do is see how we could make the remainder of the property tax investment more affordable for Lethbridge residents by finding internal efficiencies at the city, which, in turn, though is difficult because it could mean that if we wanna lower taxes, we need to reduce programming or increase fees for something else in the city.”
She says she doesn’t want to pull one lever that says lower property taxes, but behind the other lever, it means raising the price of something else.
“I would rather be honest and open about it. Here’s our property tax base. This is what we have to charge, and this is the reason why. Just to have a better explanation for Lethbridge residents so they understand when their property taxes are increasing significantly, what that money is actually going towards and how that will benefit them.”
If elected to Lethbridge City Council, Legge says that using knowledge from past experiences is the key to not burn out and to try to be in all the places with all the people at once. She says it is important to her for her kids to be involved in some part of the democratic process and understand what she is doing.
