My name is Craig Anderson and I am running for re-election for Mayor of Gold River. I have lived in this community for 32 years and as a single Dad, chose to raise my three kids here. My kids have graduated, moved on and I’m so proud of the adults they have become. I since have remarried and now have two step children. My goal as Mayor has been for a sustainable and livable community. Sustainable, so that our taxes can pay for our village services that we all use on a daily basis like our chlorine free clean water. Livable in that I have had many residents, young and old, tell me how important our recreation facilities are to their good health.
Everyone that has the good fortune to live in our Village is proud to say what we offer for a population base of our size. But how does it keep going fiscally with our tax base? Prudent spending and most of all carefully thought out decisions. I have been Mayor for the last 6 years and I am proud to say that we have maintained and improved all of our facilities. We have a new arena ice plant to make sure our kids can continue to enjoy hockey and figure skating on home ice. We are currently renewing the curling rink ice plant and in the spring we are revamping the community centre lobby to allow expanded access for mobility challenged residents.
In the past 6 years we’ve rebuilt all our Village’s water wells to allow more capacity, and installed auxiliary power to allow us to move water throughout the community should a power outage occur. Our sewage lift stations have also been rebuilt and have auxiliary power as well, should a power outage occur we will still be able to move the sewage without any chance of it overflowing into the Gold River. Our Village is 45 years old and these repairs were made with proactive, responsible decisions. I will not sacrifice our environment under any circumstances.
All these projects were made achievable through government grant funding. During the past 6 years our village has received 1.3 million dollars in grants from various levels of government. To access this money the Village had to spend $600,000 of our money. Not a bad deal, eh? Thanks to our wise investments our village has a bank account that any other village our size or larger envies. It is mandatory that we continue to be fiscally responsible to ensure the village services are sustainable.
In the last year two businesses have re-opened with new ownership and three key businesses have changed ownership in Gold River. I am eager to work with the new Chamber of Commerce to see how we can bring more businesses to our town together.
Our lifeblood has always been the working forest. We can finally say the forest industry has been revitalized. With this new forestry economy young families have started to move back to town!
I have been working hard representing our Village at numerous meetings at the request of Covanta and Green Island Energy to help get their power project through the bureaucratic maze of government permits. The ball is now back in Metro Vancouver’s court but with the municipal election happening we will not hear anything until at least January.
If you have any questions, please contact me on the Gold River Buzz at “Ask the Mayor” or my email grcanderson@cablerocket.com or my home phone #250-283-7100 or I will be at the Clayworks Café for coffee and questions with the Mayor on November 17, 2011 from 10am to noon.
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Following is the upcoming weekend’s schedule for GRMHA home games. Please come down to the arena and show your support!
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