Municipal Election 2026: James Wilson Candidate for Ward 3

Join us for a special series of CAC: In Conversation, covering the 2026 Municipal Election in the Fundy Albert Region. 

In this conversation, we chat with James Wilson, Candidate for the position of Councillor of Ward 3.  

All candidates were given a list of potential questions at least 24 hours in advance of their interview and were asked the same questions. We have completed light editing for clarity, length, and sound quality. All views and opinions represented in the interviews are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect those of Connecting Albert County. 

Connecting Albert County thanks our presenting sponsor, the Bennett & Albert County Healthcare Foundation.

For more information on Connecting Albert County, please go to our website or find us on Facebook or Instagram.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello and welcome to Connecting Albert County in Conversation series. This is part of our special edition covering 2026 municipal elections. I'm Melody Land, coordinator for CAC, and today I'm here with James Wilson, who is a candidate in Ward 3. And this is a ward that is having an active election. So there will be voting for this riding the day of. Thank you, James, for taking some time out of your day and being here with me.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Thank you, Melody.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

So to begin, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and uh why you're running in this election?

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Okay. So as you said, my name is James Wilson. Um, I live on the Elbert Mines Road. Uh, my family has lived there for a long time. In fact, this year we're celebrating uh 250 years in Canada. Um, most people would know me from the Kent and Riverview, where I was uh the paint associate for about a decade, although by the end of that time I knew all the departments quite well. More recently, I took a position as the assistant manager at the uh Albert Canon Museum, and that's what I was doing last summer. And then uh yeah, that's where most people know me. A few people might know me that from uh Keepers of the 114, which I post occasionally, uh, more recently on uh trying to organize the uh the uh Hillsboro Homecoming days.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

So you're running for council, and that takes a significant um leadership position. How would you describe your leadership style and how have you demonstrated community leadership in the past?

SPEAKER_02 1:47

I would describe it as a mix of flexible and collaborative. Um, sometimes other people have to lead and I support them. It's not just me always leading things. So, as I mentioned, uh three years ago, I took over the committee for organizing pills for homecoming days. Uh at that point, Homecoming Days was down to a one-day event, and I was able to, with the help of many wonderful volunteers, able to bring it back to a week-long event the first year. The second year we were able to make it bigger, we brought back the parade, and this year we're hoping to make it even bigger. Other things I've done is I have a small gaming group. Occasionally we've uh had small tournaments and like donated the money to the food bank. We've had two such tournaments like that. When the uh boys and girls club need money, I actually went to everyone's like, hey, can we help support this? And we were able to donate some money that way. And yeah, that's the that's the main ways that I've been involved in the community.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Okay. So in any of those situations or others when you've had a leadership uh type of a role, has there ever been a conflict you've been able to show leadership through? And how did you manage that type of conflict? Because as we know, serving on council, um, it is a difficult position, and sometimes those types of things do happen. There are disagreements.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

There are disagreements, yes. I wasn't really leading a team, I was on my own. I actually run a blog about the Canadian monarchy, and one of the things I do every time they have a leadership election in the federal parties is I would contact the candidates and get their opinion on the monarchy and share that with all the people who are reading my blog. And I don't think it was it wasn't the last conservative race, I think it was the one before that. Uh Aaron of Tools' first race. Anyway, I contacted his campaign, and you gotta understand, like, this takes a lot of emails to actually get a response from any of the candidates. That's just the nature of the game. And I did eventually get a con get a contact on Facebook, and he replied and he gave me his answer. And I okay, based on what he was saying, I thought it was talking directly to him. So I shared this with the Monarchist League of Canada, and they actually told their members, and some of their members apparently shared his view to him on Twitter, and it was not his view. So the so now Aaron O'Toole was mad at the Monarchist League of Canada, and the Monarchist League of Canada was mad at me as like based on what he said. I thought I was talking to him, but I I had to take responsibility. I put up a blog post, I apologize, I corrected the record, I corrected his scorecard, but I also left up the original article with a note that the information was out of date. And that's because I don't like hiding when I'm wrong. Like I can be wrong about just about anything, and there's it serves no one to claim that I am perfect. And so that's what I did in that, and I think I handled it well, and I have been a lot more uh discerning with the responses I get from politicians from now on, because I think it was a volunteer on his team who had answered on his behalf, and they hadn't made it clear that that that's what they were doing. So from now on, I try to get it directly from the horse's mouth, as it were.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

That makes a lot of sense for sure. You are moving forward and running for the election. Why did you choose to run in this municipal election in particular?

SPEAKER_02 5:23

So the reason I chose to run is because I believe I have a unique perspective. I have been involved in a lot of different types of jobs and groups over the years. I have worked retail, tourism, construction, I've been front-facing jobs, behind-the-scenes jobs, I've worked for small companies, large companies, I've even dabbled a little bit in working for myself. And I think that variety is a good thing because municipal council, like the stereotype is that municipal councils get full of retirees and business owners. And that's fine. You need those, you need those views. But if you just have those types of people's people running for elections year after year, I think it creates a blind spot. And I don't think that's helpful to municipality. So I wanted to bring uh maybe a different set of views on things to the council.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

I think that's uh uh makes sense as to why you would want to run. So, how have you prepared to run for office? What have you been up to in your preparations?

SPEAKER_02 6:28

I will admit I am not good at door knocking. I am a very private person, and the idea of going door to door, um, because this is my first election, I've actually ran five times over the last decade, and the first election, door knocking filled me with absolute drain. Um I've gotten better at it, and I I do credit uh working at Kent for that, because that is a very, you have to go up and like go talk to people, show initiative in that. And I think I have gotten better at going to people's doors, and people are it's not even that the people were mean or anything, like everyone's been lovely. Uh, and they're willing to share the views, or they're at least polite. And so this for this run, I'm actually I've door knocked more than any of my previous campaigns combined. So I did that. I also I also like was very consistent. If you look over my previous platforms, there is a consistency there. Like you can find them and you'll see, like, yeah, this this guy isn't just saying things because they're popular. He actually believes these things that he's saying. Basically, it was just getting better at get uh going out and talking to people. That's the main thing that I had to do to prepare for this campaign.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Okay. And so speaking of platforms, um, what is your platform? What can you tell us about the platform that you're presenting?

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Sure. So there's four main areas, and then there's policies underneath those. So the main policy header is greater transparency and accountability on council. I believe we need a new deal for Fund Ay Albert, a new financing arrangement. Uh, I believe we need a flexible rural plan for the municipality, and I believe we need protection for our architectural heritage. And underneath all those four categories, there's a bunch of sub points. I don't know if you want me to go through them or not.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Entirely up to you. Or maybe where can people find that information if they want more details?

SPEAKER_02 8:25

So I have it all posted on uh my uh campaign page, which is uh facebook.com slash James for the number four Albert. So James for Albert. And I'm planning to door knock every house in my in my ward. So you're eventually going to get a copy of this platform.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

So if you it sounds like your platform has a multiple steps and is very thought out. Um what would be the one takeaway or the thing you would primarily hope to achieve if you had to focus in on one aspect in your first term serving?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

So I think that the one that really needs to get done is we need a better funding model for the municipality. Because people talk about the need for better roads, more community support, more business support. None of that can be done unless we can fix the funding model for the municipality. And it it's actually really weird. I only found out recently that New Brunswick actually has some of the most restrictive municipal financing rules in the entire country. In fact, I've been going through different ideas, how well, how could we like fund the municipality? And every time I'd I'd look into it, I'd run up to the wall like, no, the municipality is not allowed to do this. And it's a little bit frustrating because like it kind of handicaps us from being able to do the things that the municipality is mandated to do. So if there was one thing out of these four that I want to get done, it'd be that.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Okay. Thank you. Serving your community through municipal government can be quite time consuming. And there are multiple meetings per month at various times of the day and evening, as well as community events, boards, other projects, and that sort of thing. Can you speak to any concerns that voters might have about how you will manage your time and how available you will be to serve your constituents?

SPEAKER_02 10:44

So that's so one of the things I really preference for like the jobs I take is them having flexible schedules. And Kent was really good for that. As long as I knew aheadtime I could get any day off I wanted, pretty much. And the museum has been the same way. Like I've been able to take various time off for doing other things. Um, the other thing is eventually, although I do love working at the museum, it is a great place to work. I do eventually transition to a more flexible self-employment. As I said earlier, I have dabbled in self-employment mostly in real estate. And I'd like to pursue that more because that would give me more free time to actually focus on other things like counsel. As for being available, I'm always willing to talk about politics. Like I'm one of those weird guys who like finds it fun. Um, but me and uh Alistair, who's running in Ward 4, we actually discussed kind of having like a day of the week where we'd actually like just sit at the gateway market, discuss politics, and like people come in and join us. And I think that'd be good. Like people could just stop by, have their views like with us in person. And yeah, like I'm not I'm not in this to like hide away in some cave and like no, you can't talk to me.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

So, in regards to training for counselors, earlier this year there has been and there was a lot of discussion around mandatory training for municipal counselors, whether or not it had to be mandatory, whether it was going to even be available, so on and so forth. Before or against required training, and what are your feelings in regards to the training for counselors in general?

SPEAKER_02 12:24

So, if I was to apply for any other job, there would be mandatory training. And it seems weird to me that you can join council and the training might not be mandatory. So, yes, I'm in fan favor of mandatory training for the job you've just applied for.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

And have you ever done municipal or political training, um, process procedural things in the past?

SPEAKER_02 12:53

I'm going to say no. Uh, uh obviously, I have not been elected to office before. I was on the advisory board for the LSD before they were all amalgamated with the municipalities, but there wasn't a whole lot of training with that. I think there might have been a document or two, but it was very light because obviously it was an advisory board. It didn't really have any responsibilities per se. Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Okay. So in that vein, um, the next section is about familiarity with policy and procedure. The New Brunswick Local Governance Act is the primary legislation governing municipalities, rural communities, and regional districts, particularly following major reforms that were effective in January of 2023. There were some key updates during that time, such as regional service delivery changes, a new local governance commission, the restructuring of local services to the districts, etc. The act sets the framework for the powers that council does have and the financial duties and bylaws. Can you share with us uh your level of familiarity with the NB Local Governance Act?

SPEAKER_02 14:08

A little bit higher than the average person. As I said, I've looked into this act trying to figure out ways to like fund different things. Right. So I'm basically familiar with what you can't do on the at the municipal level.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Okay, thank you. Moving into something you've mentioned in your uh platform, transparencies. There have been many public conversations around concerns in regards to transparency of local council, perceived conflicts of interest, and that sort of thing that have occurred around decision making of counselors. What is your general response to this concern?

SPEAKER_02 14:51

I think that the perception that accountability is not good is itself a problem. Um, because obviously people don't think we're being transparent. This can breed distrust and distrust of the government makes even like well-meaning reforms difficult to pull off. So on the other hand, we obviously need the structures in place so that transparency and accountability is there because if you don't have those structures, something criminal might happen. So you need those structures in place to ensure accountability, but you also need the public to trust that the government is acting in their best interests. And those two things go together.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Yes. So if you're the successful candidate, how will you hold yourself transparent and avoid potential conflicts of interest? And how will that impact um your municipal work?

SPEAKER_02 15:50

I think there might be a perception among politicians who get in that they have to be involved in every decision because that's what they're elected to do. And I think you need to take a step back and look, okay, am I too close to this decision that's being made? Obviously, like as I said, I'm trying to get into real estate. I was actually trying to look for properties in the municipality that they might be selling me. Obviously, during my time in council, I'm not gonna be doing that anymore because that is too close to my job. And obviously, my realtors that I use, I use Nick Dunfield and Sean Mayo, if they show up to cancel trying to get land for someone else, I'm getting out, I'm getting out of that meeting at that point. Like that might not be legally be required, but I don't want to be even touch that.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Okay. Thank you for that response, that thoughtful response. Moving into some different files, and these are feedback and questions as well that community members have put forward. I've um pulled them together, and some of them were very specific, so I've made them a little more general, that sort of thing. Um, so we'll just jump into some of those files. Under nature and environmental concerns. So we know the village of Funde Albert has a lot of resources, but perhaps the most obvious is our connection to our natural environment. It's so profound that it's actually highlighted and tagline friendly by nature. We are also part of the UNESCO Funded Biosphere Region, a huge and globally significant designation. How do you see the municipality's role in maintaining, managing, and utilizing our natural resources?

SPEAKER_02 17:30

So before I go into like what we can do in the future, I do want to point out that before amalgamation, I actually was able to get a policy into the Hillsboro municipality basically to protect their green spaces that they have. And part of that was if they cut down any trees on municipal property, they replant them so that we maintain the kind of the green nature of Hillsboro even as we continue to grow. Going forward, so as you might notice my or you might remember, my platform had a protection for our architectural heritage. That actually included a section on forming a committee to look into whether covered bridges, which were part of our architectural past, might actually be part of our architectural future. And the reason I did that is because one, we have local knowledge on how to do that. We have a world-class wooden bridge builder in Elbert County, and wood is very abundant here, and as well, uh transporting steel, concrete, asphalt, that is one, very expensive, two, very polluting. So I think we really should look really hard at what local materials we have that we could do for local projects. We have a nearly inexhaustible supply of river clay, which in the Netherlands they have actually used for their side streets for uh brick roads, which are much easier to repair and cheaper. That's something to look into. And that's why I put that idea that we should have a community looking at is there local resources we could use for the municipality because one, they're cheaper, and two, because it's more environmentally sustainable to use local know-how and materials. Okay. So um, in that regard, that that's what I have for that.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Um to follow up on that, um one thing that's been discussed a lot as well is the spraying of the region's forests with glycophates. What are your thoughts about that?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

I'm against that. I'm against that for two reasons. One is the very real health concerns. Um, there's been a lot of research coming out, which has me concerned. And two, the the idea that we need to use glycosphate to thin out the forest, get rid of all the uh the uh hardwood trees so we can have the softwood trees grow up. I don't think I agree with that on a few different levels. One, it kind of locks us into using our forest for one use, which is lumber. When we actually use our forests for many different reasons, like maple syrup production is like the obvious one. And I think we're overly favoring a specific business model when we say let's just make sure it's all softwood so we can uh haul it out. And two, this is actually the the Acadian forest bioregion. We're supposed to have mixed forests here, like it's not supposed to be just hardwood hot, just softwood. Like the fact that we have all types of trees is a part of the natural environment. And when we mess with that, it actually makes everything kind of go at a whack. Like, if you have a forest of softwood, you've already limited the type of animals that can live there. I don't support it for environmental, kind of economic reasons, but also the health reasons.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Okay. Thank you for that response. Moving into a file on housing, poverty, and cost of living. There's always a lot of discussion around the challenges of living. The cost of living has a huge impact on the residents of your village. Precarious housing is a problem in our region. Statistics do suggest that there's a significant number of folks who are within just a couple paychecks of risk of homelessness or displacement. There's increased use of food banks and other food security resources, so on and so forth. How have you in the past, or how will you in the future use the full range of municipalities' tools and resources to increase access to affordable housing, reduce or eliminate homelessness, increase food security, or in general? Have a positive effect in any area of poverty reduction.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Well, this is a very broad question.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

It is. It's a big question.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Yes. So let's let's try and pick away at it. Okay. Um, so starters, uh, during the last council, there was a move to kind of limit uh people having livestock around their areas. And I'll give a shout out to uh Alistair and Ward 4. He actually he went to the bat for that, he got a petition together, he got that stopped. And I think that allowing people to have like a couple chickens in their yard is good because one, it helps with the food uh scarce uh insecurity problem because food in the supermarkets is getting expensive, it is getting quite expensive. Uh $20 does not go as far as it used to. Um, the other thing is it's we do have a lot of missable properties. Like as I said, I was looking at the list of municipal properties. There's a lot of missable property that we own, and a lot of it has been set aside for uses, and it's kind of just sitting there. Now, I'm not sure if I want to say, let's review all the decisions we've made for the missile property that we have. But if we did want to like get people building more housing, that is something we do. We have a lot of land for that. Um, so there's that. Obviously, I'm going to harp on about the tax rates. The tax rates do need to come down, which is why we need the better funding from the municipality. Another, okay, we're going to talk about zoning, which is not a sexy topic, but bear with me. In North America, zoning is very restrictive. It's called exclusionary zoning. Basically, everything is supposed to be kept away from everything else. Residentialism in the residential areas, commercials in the commercial area, industrial is in the industrial area. To an extent, this is good because you don't want like factories or polluted areas right next to preschools. I understand that. But it gets a little crazy. And North America is the only place where this happens. In Europe, they have a system where the these the zoning laws overlap quite a bit. So if you build something like it would fit in another zone, which makes building a lot of different things easier, which is a problem. Like, we've all heard about like people wanting to build an apartment building, and then like all the all the single family residents around, like, no, we don't want an apartment building here. And they can't do it because the zoning would have to be changed to allow the apartment building in the first place. And this doesn't really happen in Europe. It doesn't happen in Japan either, which has kind of a system where it's like nesting jolls, where everything that's allowed in the first area is allowed in the second area, which is allowed in the third area, plus these new things. And the only thing that's really separated off is industrial, which again, you don't want in you don't want heavy industry next to preschools. So I think we can make a flexible rural plan, which hey, that's one of my platform points. Okay, and I think it would make it easier for people to try and build more housing here, but also build different types of combination units. So, Melody, here's a question for you. If I was to ask you what building in Hillsboro has the best tax rate or tax revenue to the municipality versus amount of land used, which one would you say it is?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Well, would it be the apartments?

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Actually, no. Really? So no, because that is just a residential tax rate. Okay. So, and some people might guess the uh the grocery store, which is a good guess. Like the the raw numbers, it brings in a lot of tax revenue, but it has a lot of space. It's actually the Ford Pharmacy. Really? Yeah. And yeah, because you have the commercial on the main floor and then you have the apartments above. Okay. And because of how zoning in North America works, those types of combined buildings are very hard to build.

unknown 26:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

But they're very good for municipalities and they're very good for the building owners. Because they are able to get quite good rents and they're able to pay the taxes on them. And it creates more housing and more places for businesses. And it's also very good for making walkable communities. Like Hillsboro is get is very very good in that it's fairly walkable. You can live in Hillsboro and not necessarily need a car. Because cars are one of the biggest expenses, basically, biggest expenses a household can have, especially with the way our roads are. I know that last month I spent a thousand dollars on repairs, and I'll probably be spending another thousand in a couple months. Like it gets ridiculous over time.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

So I think we do need zoning reform to make things more flexible, both because you want people to be able to have like livestock who have always had livestock. That's one thing, and that's good for the food security issue. You also want more flexible zoning because you want developers to be able to build different things that help the community like with our housing issues, with our need for rental spaces for businesses, and make it make it a pleasant community. Because if you have like giant suburbs, giant suburbs are actually very bad for municipalities because one, there's a lot of roads that need to be paved, which is expensive, and there's a lot of utilities that need to go in, but the tax rate for suburbs generally isn't enough to cover that. Okay. So, and I'm gonna stop here because if we get onto this topic, we're going to go down a rabbit hole and we don't have the time.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Well, and that's fair. And do you know what? It's a natural segue to the next file I wanted to bring up, which is economic development. What do you see as a municipal council's role in regards to not economic development?

SPEAKER_02 28:25

I think the uh the role of the municipality is one, they need to be consistent. Um, they can't be offering like money to one business and saying, no, no, the next business can't have anything. They can't be in a situation where like a business is trying to find out is this a good place to set up and the information is hidden deep in the minutes of a meeting that happened three months ago. Like it's very hard to find the admissible tax rate on the missile website, which brings me to the uh transparency and accountability issue. It's not just about making sure the council's behaving, it's also about making sure that people and businesses can find the information they need about the community. Like, if I had if I was coming away and I was looking for an area that like had a good commercial tax rate, as looking at the website, I would quit in frustration before I ever found the commercial tax rate on that website. So, yeah, that's two issues. There's making it easier for businesses to actually like have the correct zoning for what they want to set up. Um, I'm gonna bring up the uh Steve Street property sale. One of the things that factored into that, from what I've heard, is that one of the people needed to change the zoning for that to have their business there. Well, that's that factored into another person getting it. What if when they would it have gone different if the uh person who said like if that zoning was good for their business already? I don't know. But it would have helped that you don't have to change zoning as much as you did in the past.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Right. Okay, so what are some of your thoughts about the best ways to grow Funday Albert?

SPEAKER_02 30:08

So I mentioned uh in passing about the uh the the river clay and the pay codiac in general. Yes. So it has always struck me as a little bit weird that we have this large riverway and there's no activity on it at all. Like even the fishing boats don't go up very far into the Pedicodiac itself. So and I've seen things online about people wanting to have like uh hydraulic power generation on there, and it seems like the Pedicodiac in general is a resource that we've kind of ignored. Like it used to be a transportation link, it used to be like it used to be much more poor than it is now, and it seems like we've kind of forgotten about it, even though it's just right there. So there's things we could do in that regard. Um I know that like tourism is like gonna be a part of our economy forever. Like we have a lot of good really good tourist attractions here. We struggle with winter tourism, and I know that someone did try to set up a ski hill in Albert County, but the reason they couldn't get it set up is because they couldn't get the machinery for the chairlifts, which is understandable, because I think those things are like a million dollars each. So I think we can expand if we could expand tourism into the winter months, that would be great. If we could make use better use of the Pecreac, either for using the clay for brick production, because right now the main brick production in Maritimes happens in northern New Brunswick and they get their clay from Nova Scotia. Which seems a little bit strange, but okay. Uh so that uh more winter tourism and how the municipality would go about doing this, like for for instance, the municipality owns some land along Pecodiac River, which I don't believe has been designated for anything yet.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

So moving and somewhat connected to some of the things you've mentioned, actually, is the arts and culture and history file. How and or do you think that art and culture and history add value to our municipality? Oh yes.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Um like the Albergina Museum is like somewhat underappreciated. When I first worked there as a summer student about a decade ago, oh no, about 15 years ago? It's it was a long time. Uh when I worked there as a summer student, we didn't get that many people in. It's grown so much since then, which is great because we have really interesting history. Like we are the birthplace of a prime minister, we have the first female ship captain in North America, we have like the the Tom Collins trials, we have all these interesting stories, and it's great that people are starting to find them. And I I believe it does bring value to the community to know those stories and to be able to share them with other people. We we got a lot of Americans this this summer, and they were they were all very, very impressed with what they saw here.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

That's awesome. So how so how do you see the municipality um playing a role or the most important ways the municipality can engage with the issue history, arts, culture file, maybe through things like strategic planning, policy, investment, programming, so on and so forth?

SPEAKER_02 33:48

The municipality could fund things if it had the money. We're going to I'm gonna keep harping on that forever, I'm sure. The other thing is the use of space. So if I remember correctly, the municipality owns the the Stees Museum. They owns the land that it sits on. The Steves Museum, I think, could be made a bigger draw potentially. Um one thing is that we actually used to have the quilt fair, which is now down at the Albert County Museum, and I I don't want to like take that away from them. But those kind of events, like even Hillsboro Homecoming Days, is still even the three three years in, it's still a very local celebration. I think it could become a more regional celebration. Um, I actually had a person who uh joined the uh organizing committee state that for things like the Santa Claus parade, uh people with young kids tend to come down here rather than go to the Monction one because we're quicker getting ours going because they want to be able to see Santa and they don't want to have to wait half an hour in the cold with young children for that. Right. So I think we could and like the the Santa Claus Parade and the Homecoming Day Parade and things like that, those aren't really like well, they are they are cultural things, I guess. And the municipality has kind of been uninvolved. I know uh working with the uh Homecoming Days, like we've we've we've invited the uh municipality to get involved, and we've had some limited uh involvement, and we're actually looking to invite Jim Campbell to our next meeting because we want to have like we want to have some council involvement as we're doing things because we're coming up on a bunch of things where like we're like we want to do this, we need to talk to the municipality about it, and we it'd be very good to have them directly involved so we can get answers to things much quicker than they have been. Okay. Um, recently the municipality had a volunteer roundtable, which again isn't directly related to arts and culture, but it is good to get like all these different volunteer organizations working together better, and I'm glad that they took that step. And I really hope that the incoming council continues with this, continue like creates these spaces where all these groups can collaborate and talk about like their the challenges and also like support each other.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Right. Super. Well, a lot of your conversation has been around or indirectly around infrastructure. Um, you've mentioned rezoning and things like that. We know the roads are always a major concern for residents, um, but it's not just limited to roads. How would you utilize the full range of the municipality's tools and resources in managing, maintaining, or improving important municipal infrastructure, or even potentially developing new projects or initiatives?

SPEAKER_02 36:43

That is a good question. So this might actually touch back on the uh arts and cultures thing for a second, but as I said, uh part of my platform is protection of our architectural heritage. And it's if you've seen, like we have a lot of really old buildings, some back to the 1800s, in Hillsboro, in Riverside Albert, all around. And some of them are really starting to show their age. And it's very, it's very hard to one fix up some of these buildings. Some of them actually require specialized knowledge. And I can understand why the owners might not be able, able or willing to do that. And I think one area where municipality could help with that is being proactive about getting grants for basic community uh beautification, like being more pre proactive against about going after those things, identifying heritage properties that need a little bit of TLC, and helping the owners like work with work on that. Because obviously, I want I want people who like go down through uh the 114 to Punny National Park or what have you, be like, wow, this is a really good-looking community. And I think like it is possible because as I said, we have a lot of really interesting buildings, they just need like a little touch-up. As I mentioned briefly earlier, we we need like money for the infrastructure, and one way we could do that is by having like by cutting the like by having a cheaper alternative for other things. So, for instance, we have a sidewalk that goes through Surrey and then it goes different parts of Hillsboro, and it's in atrocious shape. Uh, the point that when I was last running for mayor, the people at the uh the funding manor retirement home said that they couldn't get from their place over to the store because like the the sidewalks were were not usable, they were basically going out to the road. Now, replacing that with concrete is doable, and we can do that. I'm just wondering, is there cheaper alternatives? I mentioned like using local materials that actually like in the production of bricks, because the thing about like using bricks, which are you actually used in Moncton more than here, which is interesting because they used it for aesthetic reasons, but it's also a lot cheaper to use and easier to repair. We could have brick sidewalks, and if a brick fails or raises, you take out the bricks, you fix the underlying layer, you put the bricks back, as opposed to concrete or asphalt where you pour it and it's it's there, and if it breaks, you kind of have to wait until it's broken enough through make to justify repairing it, which is not great because then for long periods of time you're stuck with a sidewalk that the elderly especially can't use, but even like people just walking along would rather walk on the shoulder of the road, which is still smooth. So I think if we you start using cheaper local materials more often, this will leave us more money for the big infrastructure costs that we do need. Because I've been I might come off as being against asphalt. Asphalt is wonderful for high speed roads, and the 114 is a high speed road, and if we're going to afford keeping that in any condition worth keeping it in, we need to find ways to actually make other areas with asphalt currently use less of it.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Okay, so related to infrastructure, um, amalgamation is very connected to that because it did bring together the infrastructure of three separate municipalities now into one of Funday Albert. So, regardless of the individual feelings on amalgamation, we are living with the consequences of it. How will you approach challenges related to this experience? And are you prepared to serve the greater community of Funday Albert?

SPEAKER_02 41:06

So, to answer the last part of that question, yes, I'm willing to serve the greater community of Funde Albert, you don't get in, you don't benefit from having all of the different parts of the municipality at each other's throats. That that does not help us. Uh, because first the people get disunited and then the elected representatives will want to represent the people, they'll get disunited, and we'll get nothing done. So when different parts of the municipalities say we're being taxed too high, which I know Lower Coverdale are saying that. In fact, every part of the municipality is saying that we it's one of the factors of amalgamation that everyone has grievances about their tax rate, even though we're we have many different tax rates in the municipality. So I think we have to be understanding about what people in other parts of the municipality are saying, and I think if we can like fix that issue by itself, we will have a better like community relations uh set up. So one thing that I have in my platform is to start the process for applying to have the Kent Hills area added to the municipality. And some people might say, wait, we're so big. Why are you trying to make us bigger? But the Kent Hills region is interesting in that it has basically no extra expenses associated with it for the municipality, but it has a lot of commercial taxation potential from the wind farms that are there. And I think that would take quite a bit of pressure off of our budget if we had that. I still think we need like comprehensive financial reform from the province, but that would definitely help us get at least the short term done. And you said, like, regardless of personal opinions on it, but I will go on the record and say, like, I like the idea of amalgamation. I don't like how it was carried out. Personally, I think in the 1960s, when they abolished county government, that was a mistake. And if you actually look back at county government, they didn't have these problems, they had the financial resources and the setup to actually support. In fact, they they were a profitable municipality back then. And a lot of this has come down to when they abolished county government, they centralized a lot of power and taxation in Fredericton. And when they amalgamated everything, they didn't really give that taxation power back. So I think we should actually honestly, if if I had my way, we'd just reestablish Albert County in its entirety. But for now, for Funde Albert, I think we need we need the tools to be able to do our do our job.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

But also, people have been talking about how like the different communities. like don't really have a lot going with each other and people have suggested like having like ball tournaments between them and like different things like that. And I think uh yeah like we we should have events that take in like the entire municipality which might actually go back to the whole arts and culture thing.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Maybe the municipality should uh fund a uh a a regional softball tournament between all the different parts of the municipality that would be a very interesting thing to watch I think and I would definitely be the one watching not playing for sure but I'll cheer everybody on. So thank you so much for spending this time with me. Before we wrap up do you have any final thoughts? Is there anything we haven't covered that you would want the municipal residents to know about you and your bid in this election yeah I just want everyone to know that if elected I will do my best for Funday Albert. And I think that's probably a good statement to end on for sure. Thank you so much, James. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to chat with us and to help us at Connecting Albert County engage with municipal elections. We hope to encourage folks to get out there and vote and vote with education and knowledge about the people that you're voting for. And so because of folks like you're able to do that better. So thanks for your time and we will be back with another episode of Connecting Albert County in conversation the municipal election series for 2026. Thanks for tuning in