Dean Ward Candidate for council 2013

Below is the information I handed out at the Ratepayers meeting Wednesday night about where I stand heading into this election and some of the issues that I feel are important to this community and it's residents.

                             Election 2013         -       Dean Ward

My name is Dean Ward  and I am very pleased to have this opportunity to ask for your vote in the upcoming election.

I am very proud to be the husband of Debbie, father of three and proud grandfather of two beautiful girls. I have been living in the Crowsnest Pass for 31 years.

I sat on the Historical society board for three years; currently I am a member of the Crowsnest Pass Health Foundation. In addition, I have six years experience sitting on council, which makes me very familiar with municipal budgets and all the other duties expected of a Councilor.

Crowsnest Pass is a great place to live and we are surrounded by nothing but pure natural beauty. We have great schools, a hospital and many other amenities.  But the most important, we have great people.

We do have challenges: a declining population, the oldest population in Alberta, high percentage of residents on a fixed income, and one of the lowest commercial/industrial tax bases in the province 

 In 2010 this community voted for change, but how much and how fast should have been the question.

Strategic Plan was put together in 2011 by mostly people that do not live here. It has many good recommendations, but it was always Council’s plan and it was never “our plan.” The Mayor tells the media “now that a lot of hard work has been done, they can move on to more sophisticated work” when, where and what he is hoping to do to us sometime later.

My positions moving forward 2013-2017

Taxes : Government’s job should be to minimize costs, not maximize revenues. Many of our residents live on a fixed income that never increases by more than the cost of living. I will work very hard to ensure that all municipal taxes, franchise fees, utility costs, permits, fines etc do not increase by more than the cost of living at the most.

Smaller Government: We cannot afford to have an administration that costs us well in excess of $1 million dollars a year. One out of every five homes pays taxes each year just to finance Council’s “Dream Team”.

Seniors-York Creek Lodge is a valuable asset for this community that is in dire need of up grading. Previous council had passed a motion putting aside $100,000 a year to prepare for that future opportunity. This year six months into the budget process administration realized that they had totally miscalculated the tax base, scrambling council agreed to balance the budget by dropping the $100,000 to the Lodge.

Seniors-Town Rounder is one of the unique services the municipality provides to its seniors. After the last driver retired, his position as only been filled by a temporary employee and this concerns me. I will commit to support and maintain this service if elected.  

Frivolous Spending: Our municipal brand/logo, sadly at the same time council cut the $100,000 contribution to the lodge, they approved an expenditure of over $300,000 to hire an expensive consultant to throw together numerous triangles, to build entrance signs, to put up banners and to put this mess on every piece of municipal equipment and stationary. Can anybody explain to me how the logo relates to the Crowsnest Pass?

Consultants: Will we ever really know how much money we have spent on consultants over the last three years? Now we have another one conducting a Recreation study. Our recreation board could have designed a survey, made it available to our residents and gathered the results at the municipal office?    

Peace Officer Program: We were originally told that the project would pay for itself because the municipality anticipated an Automatic Traffic Enforcement program would be put into place. They were wrong. Do we really need two peace officers to enforce bylaws and educate the local residents? We need a full disclosure on what this program is really costing us. As our reputation grows as a speed trap, the revenues will only decrease, but the costs will remain.

Employee Morale: The level of the relationship between the municipal staff and management as sunk to an all time low, so low, that a consultant was brought in to look at the situation. This did not come about over the last two weeks, the next council needs to direct and demand that administration sit down with CUPE and resolve this quickly.

Communications: Newsletters are good until we have our representatives insulting us. Town hall meeting are great until they are used as a tool to attack and embarrass the people that pay the bills. Next council should communicate both professionally and in town hall meeting where council “listens” to the public’s input. Some how in the last year over 2500 residents felt that council was not listening?

Hotels: I will demand that next council not spend $50,000 or any amount to purchase a franchise for a private company, and let’s get the first hotel built before we start fantasizing about a second one.

Housing Affordability: Most elections, we hear candidates speaking about affordable housing. So many of our residents are seniors on a fixed income we need to keep our housing “affordable”. Municipal government cannot control the costs of everything in society; but there are some things they can. To vote to keep tax increases down while at the same time taking substantially more money from our residents in the form of Franchise Fees, Utility bills and every other dollar we can take out of your pocket achieves nothing for the average taxpayer.  

  On October 21, vote for Dean Ward

Any questions, comments or concerns please contact Dean at 563-4128 or deanward4@msn.com

Change in the Crowsnest Pass

I sat on council for six years during that time I learnt that this town has a lot of problems, declining and ageing population, lack of industry and development, duplication of services and facilities that most taxpayers can not afford to support.

Do we need change? Absolutely, change that involves attracting people here, bringing development and industry, looking at where our community could be ran more efficiently. Knowing all of these issues our local government needs to be ran as if it’s on a tight budget, because it should be.

Let’s talk about the change we can not and do not want, over spending the municipality will next year in the final year of this council’s term, take in $1.4 million more dollars out of  the taxpayers pockets than it did in 2010 that’s $400 per home.

They are building an empire that we can not afford, look at the number of staff in the municipal office do we really need more administration.

Municipal peace officers do we want two peace officers? Was that a good change? they wrote 2 bylaw tickets in the month of September, they are being looked at has a cash cow not a tool to clean up our community.

Once again we have consultants in our community talking about “branding” what was so wrong with “Mountain Freedom”? Thunder in the Valley brought this community way more attention than any new brand will. We all know there were problems go talk to the RCMP get the stats for the number of arrests over the last five years, we saw a tremendous decline the event was being ran better every year.

Fire Departments, we spent $300,000 in 2010 operating the Fire Departments how many full time Firemen are we going to get for that figure? Could Fire departments be ran better? Of course every branch of government could be run better, we have to find ways to operate our community on the present dollars not more.

It’s really hard to convince taxpayers of this when you see almost $300,000 spent on a piece of equipment that spends 98% of it’s time sitting in the back of the Blairmore Shop, all the new pickups running around and consultant after consultant.

The termination of a municipal employee should that have happened? We do not know all the details.

Personally, I have no problem terminating an employee with just cause, but there must be a fair process, if you believe you have grounds to terminate an employee you suspend them. You do a complete investigation then you let them go (it’s called due process) you don’t terminate them. Then seek the justification by releasing a press release every second day with a new revelation.

This situation with better communication and due process would have been handled so much better.

Back to the start do we need change? We all know the answer, of course, but I am having a tough time thinking of a good, positive change in the last two years. We need change that involves the people of the Crowsnest Pass.

And for those that disagree with me step up to the plate and point out the positive changes for us all to read.  

Crowsnest Pass Ratepayers Association

Open Letter to Mayor and Council


The Municipal Government Act states that under general duties of councilors:

(a) to consider the welfare and interests of the municipality as a whole and to bring to council’s attention anything that would promote the welfare or interests of the municipality.

This could be interpreted as if only the councilor considers that which would promote the welfare or interests of the municipality and the taxpayer’s input would be meaningless.

There are two types of government, the irresponsible and the responsible. We are currently being led by a group using the irresponsible method. Anyone and I do mean anyone can balance a budget by increasing fees, utilities, licenses, electrical, etc. etc. and rewriting the bylaws which when violated carry a large fine the first offense beginning at $250. Tally up the total increased revenue and add 2.5% to the property tax and voila you have a balanced budget even one that would show a surplus. Such genius!

The second type of governing the responsible method takes some doing. It is a method using common sense, restraint, cutting spending and if needs be to obtain a balanced budget add a minimal amount to the property tax. This method shows a governing body to be accountable and fiscally responsible to the people it represents, the taxpayer.

By increasing everything from soup to nuts, have you considered the burden you are placing upon the seniors of this community? What do we do, email Stephen Harper or Flaherty and tell them that our municipality is nickel and diming us to the extent that we might have to cut back on our groceries, or perhaps cut out one of our prescriptions because our rates went up and we are over budget? I’m sure that they just might consider a $1.50 raise on our pension.

Let’s face the truth of the matter. You have hired a group of strangers (experts) to come to our community and force upon us their ideas and methods in order to teach us how we should live in our own domain. We've been doing pretty well up until now, or so we thought so, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Many people I have spoken with have stated that this isn't Calgary and we do not have to deal with the noise, pace and congestion which in order to curb problems arising from this are forced to pass bylaws. This is not the case here, and if my sidewalk isn't cleared of snow, then it’s because I cleared it and the snowplow came along and covered it up. It seems that since Kevin Robbins and Donna Tona have been on board we have a new bylaw to contend almost every week, no ifs and or buts, it’s a done deal and we have to live with it.

Also, why are you doing everything that covers a period of three years? Has the thought crossed your mind that you won’t be in office then? This council and mayor are suffering from the BIG FROG LITTLE PUDDLE SYNDROME. Get over it and start doing the job you were elected to do instead of harassing your citizens and preying on us. If this is what you consider having our best interests at heart then you certainly have a misconstrued idea as to what good governing is all about. Start being responsible, and show some Government Transparency and we will feel that maybe we are not just cash cows living here for the hell of it.

Marilyn Milley - (on behalf of the Ratepayers Association)

Municipal spending Watch, How is the Crowsnest Pass Doing?

How responsible is your community financially? Can your community maintain the present level of spending?
The arguments always presented for communities to increase taxes are that population growth and the resulting demands, in addition to inflation are taking away the spending power of the tax dollars collected.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business just released a study that shows how Alberta and its individual municipalities are doing in this area. Under the title of "Alberta Municipal Spending Watch" its a very interesting report and certainly goes a long way to showing that population and inflation are only part of the additional spending.
For example Alberta as a province from 2000-2006 saw a combined population and inflation increase of 33.8%, during that same time frame municipal spending increased by 55.6%.
Our community the Crowsnest Pass saw a combined population and inflation increase of 17.1%, during that 2000-2006 time frame our spending increased by 46.2%.
Obviously if your population isn't growing neither will your tax base which means that the burden on the individual tax payer becomes ever greater.
The report is available on the Federations web site, check out and see how your community is doing.