There is another new face in the municipal election race as Sheena Hughes announced Monday she wants a seat at St. Albert's council table.
Hughes, who grew up in St. Albert, said she wants to see a return to weekly garbage pickup and better fiscal responsibility.
“I just think we can provide better services without large tax increases, exercise better fiscal management and we can re-arrange our priorities to reflect that,” Hughes said.
Hughes gained some notoriety in 2010 during the debate over Habitat for Humanity's proposal to build affordable housing units in Akinsdale. Hughes was a critic of the project. She said she has since moved on, but learned a great deal from the experience.
“Being involved in Habitat got me interested in being involved in the decisions council was making and the repercussions,” Hughes said.
Besides the call for better stewardship of the city's finances, Hughes said she wants a return to weekly garbage pick-up. St. Albert moved to garbage pick-up every two weeks in 2011 when it also started collecting organic waste.
Hughes said she has heard horror stories from other residents about the lengths to which they go if they miss garbage collection day.
“People go down their streets begging for garbage space,” Hughes said. “There are people who have guests coming from Edmonton and when they are coming back they are taking back garbage. People are scrambling to figure out what to do with their extra garbage.”
It's services like these, instead of big-ticket capital expenses, that voters in St. Albert want, Hughes said. She called for providing core services, such as garbage collection, road repairs and snow removal, better than spending money on proposed items like a downtown parkade or re-aligning St. Anne Street, as called for in the downtown area redevelopment plan.
“I'd rather have garbage pickup than rearrange St. Anne Street,” Hughes said.
Of decisions of this council, Hughes said she was critical of votes to spend $500,000 on a study to determine where in St. Albert an LRT line would run, creating the capital program partnership fund, for which the city would borrow from itself to partially fund growth capital infrastructure, and most of the capital projects listed in the downtown plan.
“The capital partnership (program) is a dangerous program,” Hughes said. “Every time they approve a project, our taxes will go up to pay for it.”
Hughes, who grew up in Lacombe Park, worked for the provincial government for several years before leaving to raise her three children. She now sits on the board of the St. Albert Community League.
To date Gareth Jones and Ted Durham have announced they are running for city council. The election will be held Oct. 21.
