Stephen Hanley is passionate about making a difference in the community, finding efficiencies, correcting organizational issues, and being accountable.
“My fellow residents encouraged me to run, there’s a level of frustration, a lot of it has to do with perception, and I felt that I could make a difference,” Hanley said.
Hanley’s top priority includes reviewing and updating policies that are clear for the public.
“Chestermere’s problems are not unique to Chestermere. Many other cities have had the same problems. One of the big things is the policies that the city operates under an old type of business policies, it’s unclear to the public, there’s no relationship between what the city, administration, council and the public are supposed to do,” Hanley said.
“Transparency is an issue, I see a lot of statements of things that happened that are very misleading, there’s partial truth in them,” he added. “I can understand there are certain times where they can’t provide full disclosure, but for the most part it creates a level of skepticism.”
Hanley is against the rezoning of any recreational land.
“The city was built around the lake and around the golf course. People need the green spaces, they need the amenities,” Hanley said.
Hanley is concerned that developers will continue coming back to council every few years requesting to rezone recreational land.
“My suggestion is to bring forward a bylaw that says recreational land cannot be rezoned without the public, and that the bylaw cannot be repealed without the public,” Hanley said.
“Then the developer would have to convince the community as a whole, it’s a disincentive, because it would be a lot more work,” he said.
Within the next four years, if elected, Hanley wants Chestermere to catch up with neighbouring municipalities with commercial growth, improve city services, and identify how to improve the quality of life for Chestermere residents.
“Inefficiencies have also grown as the population increases, the cost of inefficiencies is worse and that goes right back into property taxes,” Hanley said.
“There’s tremendous opportunity to review that, identify opportunities, reduce the tax burden to residents and focus on things that improve the quality of life for residents because that should be council’s main priority,” he said.
