Those elected to serve the City of Lethbridge over the next four years have officially been sworn onto Lethbridge City Council.
On Monday, Blaine Hyggen was sworn in for his second term as Mayor of Lethbridge, along with the mayor, three new councillors were sworn onto council: Ryan Wolfe, Rufa Doria and Al Beeber. Returning councillors sworn onto council include Ryan Parker, Jen Schmidt-Rempel, Belinda Crowson, Mark Campbell and Rajko Dodic.
Mayor Hyggen says the two main words for the day are humble and honour, which he adds describes every day he serves on council. Hey says, looking towards the future, he believes it is going to be a great four years.
“There are some great things we’ve done, but [there are] even more things ahead. So we can continue that work that’s been done and even do better moving forward,” Hyggen says.
Hyggen says he reached out to the elected councillors after the final results were released to congratulate them and tell them that he looked forward to chatting over the next few weeks on a direction. He explains he has heard a lot of ideas, and the next little bit will be putting those ideas and thoughts together, then from there, look at what on that list can be started sooner rather than later.
“I think there’s right now priorities. We’re going to be putting people onto different committees, standing policy committees and that work. So that’s one of the top things that we need to get done quickly,” He states. “From that point forward, start to talk down your top five priorities and let’s put them all together. I would imagine many of them will blend and will be very similar.”
The second-term mayor says he is looking forward to working with the three freshman councillors, but he says he has advised them that, from past experience, starting new on council comes with a learning curve.
“I told them you’re going to be drinking from a fire hose for the first while here for sure and just getting an understanding on things [such as] where the restroom is and some of those things like that.”
Along with that understanding, Hyggen says it is also important for the trio to be up to date on the items that are already on the books in upcoming meetings. However, in his conversations with Doria, Beeber and Wolfe, he says they “are quite eager and quite excited to get serving.”
Al Beeber says he is looking forward to getting back to work and answering the needs of the community.
“During the campaign, so many people told me what their concerns were,” Beeber says. “Obviously cost of living is huge for people. You know, we need to look at those taxes, but we also need to make sure we have the services, and that’s going to cost money.”
Beeber says he expects a situation council will have to deal with, is answering the question of how to keep those service levels up without impacting the quality of life here?
“That’s going to be hugely important for council to work on in this next four-year term. I mean, the cost of inflation, we’ve got the tariff situation. This is going to be some really challenging times for municipalities right across this province.”
Councillor Wolfe echoed similar sentiments to Beeber, adding that there is a lot of anticipation about what kind of things council can get done over the next four years. But like his colleague Wolfe says, the biggest concern he heard about while out campaigning was the cost of living.
“People are generally genuinely struggling to afford their basics nowadays, and so we really have to hunker down and really take a harder look at where we’re spending money and how we’re spending money because we need to proactively try to avoid passing along these really, really painful tax increases, which everybody talked about during the election,” Wolfe says. “This might sound trite or cliche, but I would like to be able to stand in front of you in four years with an equal amount of hair and be able to say, you know what? We have hunkered down and we’ve really accomplished some things that the city indicated to us were important, and now we feel like we’ve delivered on that.”
Finally, Councillor Rufa Doria says she is excited and looking forward to representing not just the Filipino community of Lethbridge, but the diverse cultures that make up the City of Lethbridge.
“I am so proud to represent them, so if you ask me how I’m feeling now, I feel so honoured, and I’m looking forward to my responsibility to work along with the council members,” Doria says.
Doria, like her colleagues, says a priority she wants to address is affordability, along with agriculture and safer communities in Lethbridge.
Lethbridge City Council will next meet on Monday.
