Edmontonians will elect a new city council on Oct. 16 — and four contenders have already tossed their names into the race for Ward 9 in southwest Edmonton.
Rob Agostinis, Sandy Pon, Payman Parseyan and Tim Cartmell introduced themselves to residents at a community forum held at St. Thomas More Church in the Terwillegar area on Tuesday night.
The Ward 9 seat is currently held by Bryan Anderson, a 19-year council veteran, who has already announced that he plans to retire and will not run for re-election this fall.
About 170 people filled the hall at St. Thomas More to hear from the four candidates looking to fill Anderson’s shoes.
Jim Bradshaw, president of the Ridge Community League, said it’s the first time the group has held a forum this early in the campaign.
“The election is not coming up until October but it gets pretty hectic and we wanted to give people something to think about over the summer. We’ve got a very, very good set of candidates running and we wanted to give everyone a chance to actually hear what they have to say and what their positions are.”
George Peychoff, one of the attendants at the forum, has lived in the ward for over two decades.
“What are they standing for? I am going to get a feel for if they’re going to accomplish the things they say they’re going to accomplish,” he said.
Councillor Anderson had some words of advice for Agostinis, Pon, Parseyan and Cartmell.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. Listen carefully and then try to do the best you can,” he said.
He also wished the candidates good luck.
“I think that the candidates we have here tonight are all possibly good council candidates so I’m quite pleased that I believe Ward 9 is going to be well looked after.”
Watch below: Edmontonians head to the polls in October but a number of people have already put their names forward to take a run for city council. At Tuesday night’s open house for people living in Ward 9 to get a chance to meet their candidates, we asked the four people already running for the job to tell us a bit about themselves.
Some of the major issues that discussed in Ward 9 included what to do with surplus school sites, what kind of relationship council should have with developers, whether the city should install more bike lanes and how to deal with the issue of affordable housing.
Anyone wishing to run for city council can file papers until nomination day on Sept. 18.