Williams Lake News...Tuesday, Sept 27th edition

While WL Council is away in Vancouver to attend the week long UBCM Conference, local politics go on with the following news:

* Walt Cobb releases economic development strategy - see here (Tribune) and here (Welcome to WL)
* WL Mayoralty Candidates debate measures for local economy - see here
* WL Independent TV has a new video uploaded (Community Heroes) - click on "play" button and view here
* BC Division of Can Taxpayers' Federation (CTF) calls for municipal election candidates to sign a "Contract with Taxpayers' including the introduction/passage of a "Taxpayer Protection Bylaw" which includes a yearly 15% paycut for Mayor/Councillors who raise property taxes above the rate of inflation (which is currently 2.3%) - see more details here

Over at "WL City Councillor Laurie Walters' Facebook re-election page" - she is being challenged to sign the CTF's "Contract with Taxpayers" - see here 

Also - I've asked local Chief Election Officer Cindy Bouchard to clarify that currently elected officials for Williams Lake are disqualified from using City resources to get re-elected like City of Williams Lake email addresses, etc as I noted, on Kerry Cook's Facebook re-election page, that she is using her City of WL assigned email address for re-election purposes, it appears...

Update - Kerry Cook's re-election team has now removed her City email address from her Facebook re-election page

No new announcements for local election candidates.  So far - we've seen 3 announcements for WL City Council, 3 for WL Mayor, and 1 for SD #27 plus 9 confirmed candidates for CRD Areas A-L and that is a bit concerning, given next Tuesday at 9am - candidates may go to the CRD, SD #27/28, Wells/Quesnel/Williams Lake/100 Mile local Chief Election Officer to file their local elected offices papers.

Hopefully - we'll see more announcements tomorrow, Thursday and next week but the "clock is ticking", as they say, as October 14th at 4pm fast approaches

Finally - Food for Thought:

There is now "12 Announce" days prior to/on October 14th.  For a candidate to announce after October 14th and plans to win - that candidate, whoever he/she is and for whatever office they run for, I'm told, would have to be a "household" name in their local community.  Names less known would make their election run more difficult after Oct 14th, given the remaining "campaign time" (21 effective campaign days of Mon-Sat, rather than the current 37 campaign days, starting today) available prior to the 1st election vote which is on Wednesday, November 9th