Lee Pratt will be seeking another four-year term.
The Mayor of Cranbrook made the announcement to the media after Monday night’s City Council meeting, and following the recent decisions of both Don McCormack in Kimberley and Mary Guiliano to run for re-election in the coming municipal elections, set for Oct. 20, 2018.
Mayor Pratt was elected in 2014, in the first B.C. municipal elections to result in four-year terms instead of three.
“It’s been great,” Pratt said of the past three years and seven months. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve got a great council — we don’t always agree on everything, but we manage to come to some kind of agreement that gets things done. Things are really positive, and there are a lot of good things coming down the pike.
“I’m hoping to get re-elected; I’m hoping my councillors that run again get re-elected, because we’ve got a long-term vision that we’re working towards. And we’re accomplishing things. It’s amazing what we’ve accomplished.”
Mayor Pratt cited the City’s new development approval process as an example.
“That was a first, and we’re seeing now the results of it. Our building permits are going up exponentially every year. I probably meet with developers two or three times a month.”
The destiny of the old downtown firehall was a controversial issue when the current mayor and council first got elected. Council put it up for sale, and it has since become the recently opened Firehall Tap and Grill. “Look at the success of it now,” Pratt said.
The rehabilitation of the dam and lake at Idlewild was a major infrastructure project over the past three years. And Pratt said the hiring of David Kim (City of Cranbrook Chief Administrative Officer) has been great for the City.
“He’s been great to work with and he’s brought some new ideas and innovation to City Staff and to the way we’ve been doing business.”
Pratt said that looking back on his election campaign in 2014, he made three main promises, and all three have been met.
“Financial responsibility, fixing some roads and infrastructure, and economic development. I look back on that, and we’ve accomplished every one of them. We changed our budget process — it’s on a needs basis now, not a wants basis. The roadwork we did, we changed our tender process for capital infrastructure. We spent $30 million in the last three years, and because of the changes we made, every dime of that was won by local contractors,” Pratt said. “So that money stayed in the community, and kept our businesses booming and busy. It got us through the Alberta downturn.
“And we did fix a lot of roads. We have $5 million a year now allotted for roadwork.
The 2018 BC Municipal election period runs Sept. 22-Oct. 20, with voting day on Saturday, Oct. 20.
“I’m quite proud of what we’ve accomplished,” Pratt said. “I know there’s a lot more we can do, so I’ve made the decision to hopefully stick around.”
As of yet, no other candidate has announced plans to run for Mayor of Cranbrook.
