Sturgeon County officially has a mayor’s race now that Don Rigney has said he’ll run for a third term in office this fall.
Sturgeon County Mayor Don Rigney announced last week during the annual Mayor’s Charity Golf tournament at the Goose Hummock Golf Course that he would seek a third and final term as county mayor during this fall’s civic election.
Rigney is a county resident and farmer with a wife and three kids. First elected in 2001, he served two terms as a councillor before defeating Helmut Hinteregger and becoming mayor in 2007. He was acclaimed mayor in 2010.
Rigney said this would be his last run for office, win or lose.
“I am coming up on 62,” he said, and will be 66 at the end of his term if re-elected. “This is not my life. It’s a job I felt had to be done.”
Still, he said he feels he has to run because his job is not yet done.
“Spending is growing at a level that’s absolutely unsustainable,” he said, which is why he has opposed many of council’s recent budgets. He wants to give voters a choice to elect a council that will rein in spending.
Rigney flagged the upcoming North West Upgrader as one of his greatest accomplishments while in office, noting that he had been pursuing such a project since 2001. Agrium was about to close its doors due to high gas prices back then, he said, and an upgrader could provide them with cheap gas.
Twelve years later, Agrium is still going strong, and North West has shovels in the ground Rigney said.
“This single development, when completed, will be equal in value to all of Sturgeon’s current assessment.”
But there are still many regulatory hurdles to go, he said, and he wants to see the project through to the end.
As he has often done, Rigney said that the county’s tax rates are growing far faster than its population. Net municipal taxes collected today are about 375 per cent higher than they were in 1999, he said, while the county’s population is just 10 per cent higher.
(Rigney also raised these statistics during the mill rate debate in May. At the time, Rick Wojtkiw of the county’s corporate services department pointed out that while the county did collect more tax today than in 2008, it also has higher property values. Wojtkiw said that the county’s tax rate today is actually lower than it was in 2008, and is amongst the lowest in the region when compared to Strathcona, Red Deer, Parkland and Leduc county.)
If re-elected, Rigney said he will re-examine the county’s operations, especially its road department, with a view to contracting out services to save money.
“We can save millions of dollars by prudently privatizing … our road construction and our graders,” he said. “It’s one of our biggest departments.”
Council needs to take a stronger role in budgeting by giving administration a spending target to hit, Rigney said, instead of waiting for administration’s tax hike and whittling it down.
Rigney pitched himself as a principled man with an eye on the future when it came to economic growth.
“A lot of people in Canada have been paying attention to Sturgeon County and the story isn’t finished (yet).”
There are two competing visions on council right now, Rigney said, and he hopes this election will bring them into stark contrast.
“I believe that what councillors (Tom) Flynn, (Joe) Milligan, (Karen) Shaw and (Ken) McGillis are doing is trying to send us backwards,” he said. “I’m trying to make sure that those positive changes that we’ve made weren’t just luck.”
Voters should ultimately vote based on issues, Rigney said.
“If you like what I’ve done and think what I’ve done is supportable, support those issues.”
Coun. Tom Flynn is currently the only other declared candidate in the county’s mayoral race.
