Pat Toone may not be a member of Sundre's municipal council anymore, but she plans to continue to be active in the community.
Toone decided not to seek re-election in the 2013 election held Oct. 21.
She is though, a member of Greenwood Neighbourhood Place (GNP), a member of the community choir and plans to volunteer for community events.
After sitting on council for 18 years, she isn't sure how it feels to not be a part of it anymore. However, she is looking forward to having more free time. She served four terms as a councillor and two as mayor.
“I have more time to myself and now I can probably read a book for enjoyment. All the information that you get, whether it's council or a committee of council, it's a lot of reading to be done, so it takes a lot of your time,” said Toone.
“I like to sing. I sing in the community choir and that's one thing I really enjoy doing. I'm sure there are a few other things that I wouldn't mind volunteering for in the future, because we always need volunteers.”
She has lived in Sundre for the majority of her life and said before council she was always involved in whatever her children chose to do. When she joined council, her children were all grown up.
“It's been my home for a long time and I raised my kids here and I've always been involved in my church and my community,” she said.
Her experience on council has been “good, mostly”, she said.
In 1992, she and her husband were running a business in town, and the Sundre & District Chamber of Commerce had a group of people looking for council candidates.
“They came and asked me to run, mainly because the only female that was on council was retiring and they thought it would be good to have a female on the council,” she said.
At that time, council was under different legislation than it is now. Committees made decisions, not council as a whole. She ran for mayor and filled the role for six years and while she was in the position, the legislation changed. Everything had to go to council and decisions could not be made outside of council, which is the legislation today.
She ran for a third term as mayor but lost in that election.
“I had a lot of people encouraging me to run again for council. So I decided to do it as a councillor because everybody wants to talk to the mayor and figures the mayor can solve all your problems. But really, the mayor can only bring it back to council. So I figured I could be a councillor and have input and still be part of the decision making process,” she explained.
When asked what she thinks of the new council she said “time will tell” and she is glad to still see females on council.
While she was on council, one of the priorities was to communicate better with residents, she said.
“Through my whole time on council, that was the one thing that we struggled with, is better communication with people that live in our community. We tried different things and we're still, I think, struggling with better communication and I think that has to be a high priority going forward,” she said.
The town, GNP and the chamber are working on providing a better information source for people in the community, she said.
“I would really like to see that continue, because I think we work better as a town. Our people will stay in our town and shop here if they don't have to go somewhere else.”
During the Oct. 15 council workshop meeting, former mayor Annette Clews made a special announcement in recognition of Toone's last council meeting and thanked her for serving the community.
