By Greg Higgins

Former councillor Grace Lang hopes to bring business savvy to council

Oct 5, 2016 | 4:37 PM

As a local business owner in North Battlefords for two decades, one former councillor is running again to help reduce the city’s debt.

Grace Lang was on N.B.’s city council from 2006 to 2012. She moved to North Battleford with her husband in 1996 to open an IGA grocery store (now a Sobey’s) which employs roughly 100 staff. 

“I believe strongly that business has to have a strong voice on council,” Lang said. “When you make a council you have to put together a good team with all different sets of skills. When you’re building a baseball team you don’t take just pitchers. Businesses have to be represented as well.”

Lang said she’s worried about the debt load the city is incurring. She said it is time to figure out what North Battleford can handle. According to Lang, the city’s long term debt as of Dec. 2015 stood at over $44 million.

Lang said since interest rates are low right now the city is “OK” but she doesn’t expect them to stay low forever.

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“When those rates go up it is going to cripple a lot of municipalities,” Lang said. “I would like to see that our city has a plan for when those rates go up. Do they think they are going to pay off the entire thing in the next four years? Where are they going with this?”

Lang said her plan to lower debt is “don’t buy it if you don’t have the money.”

She stated there’s a difference between needing something and wanting something and the city needs to take a hard look at the big projects they currently have planned.

Lang is also running on a platform of increased community safety and advocated for giving Community Safety Officers more responsibility.

“Does the RCMP have to respond to every call?” Lang said. “Can we have one of our CSO’s go to calls like shoplifting and breaking into cars? CSO’s are also a lot more cost-efficient.”

Lang said the city will be safer and more financially sound if the RCMP have more time to deal with bigger crimes.

Greg Higgins is battlefordsNOW’s city municipal affairs and health reporter. He can be reached at ghiggins@jpbg.ca or tweet him @realgreghiggins.