Darcy Dobush wants to give local businesses a voice at town hall.
The married father of one is running in the Jan. 20 Olds byelection along with six other residents. He has been involved with the family contracting business – Olds Contracting -- for about 40 years. He was elected to Olds council once before, leaving early on in his term.
“I was on council before, roughly 10 years ago. I didn’t complete my term which is something I’ve had to wrestle with,” he said.
In recent years, he credits a personal development program with helping him to resolve things left undone. He has since married. And because of the downturned economy, he said he is winding down his business, giving him time to devote to being a councillor.
“But my real agenda for wanting to get in, and I won’t hide behind that, is I’m just more than concerned as a taxpayer, with this town with what’s happened,” said Dobush.
“Ten years ago at council, the word was sustainability. That was their key word. Everything was sustainability. I do not see the sustainability in their thinking anymore,” he said.
The town’s debt – including backing an Olds Institute loan for O-NET – is troubling, he said. He credits local resident Dick Stauffer with raising the profile of the issue around town, adding if Stauffer was running for a seat on council, he wouldn’t need to.
“How’s that (Olds Institute loan) ever going to get repaid? Is it something that the taxpayers will just have to write off and absorb?” he queried.
The town also recently passed a bylaw to borrow $10.7 million to finance construction of a new operations centre and to reclaim wastewater treatment centre land where the operations centre will be built.
This at a time when businesses in town, for the most part, are just getting by, Dobush said.
“And when you have businesses that are just getting by, you have families just getting by. And for the town to justify their ops centre and borrowing money, you know that’s just fine and dandy, but it’s a very volatile time to be doing this.”
The municipal landscape has changed since Jason Kenney came into power, he said. “And what he’s doing is not throwing money around. And that’s a huge impact for municipalities. And the Town of Olds doesn’t seem to recognize that, doesn’t seem to recognize the volatility that’s in our near future. And you add the carbon tax that’s coming back for one -- the impact on businesses and the impact on households…,” Dobush trailed off.
He takes issue with the way the town has built up its equipment fleet and hired staff to run them.
“They have no interest in hiring out, contracting out things. It’s all about buying their own stuff and running it and then trying to find people, train people to run things,” said Dobush. “And to me it’s a very sad state of affairs when you have an area like Olds and the amount of contractors (and) equipment available with businesses that are in business to survive, and can’t just go and run up their debt every year to keep going.”
And when the town does contract out for services such as for help with snow removal, Dobush said it should be with an eye for supporting local taxpayers.
“I’ve pleaded with the previous council to put some emphasis on hiring local, being taxpayers. I didn’t get anywhere with that.”
He wants a better relationship between administration and taxpayers.
“If I got in, I would be doing everything possible to encourage administration to start working with local people. How to do that? I don’t have the answer, but it’s a huge frustration being a business person in this town and attempting to communicate with administration.”
Dobush joins Mitch Thomson, Sundai Cody, Rudy Durieux, Keith Bishop, Darren Wilson and Jan Thompson in the race. The byelection will be held on Jan. 20.
