Wells Mayor Ed Coleman won't seek re-election in October 2026

Courtesy of My Cariboo Now:

Ed Coleman is retiring from politics and will not be running for Mayor of Wells in October of 2026

“Just ready for it. I’ve enjoyed being in local politics, but 7 years with Quesnel and 5 with Wells, it’s time to switch back to, I have a company that I used to work in so I’m just going to shift back to that, but I’ll see everything through my term.”

Coleman says he feels the Council has accomplished quite a bit during his time.

“The bigger ones is our waste water system, we’ve got it stabilized, and we know what the longer term investment is going to look like with the province. It’s 5 million dollars work done there and another 32 to complete it in the future. The Lowhee Berm to prevent flooding, that’s a 10 million dollar project, so we’re 90% through that project again with government support, our water plant got a million dollar upgrade so water is properly treated now and everything is safe there. We’ve got a really good start on refurbishing our community building, which the school is in, the 1942 school building, and we’ve had excellent support on that project. We got the outdoor rink completed, and then we’ve been working hard on negotiations with Osisko Development on the implementation of the mine. It’s a very complicated project that is right smack in the middle of a small community, so that process has been a lot of work.”

Coleman says they have also worked with West Fraser Timber on the wildfire interface and doing lots of work with them.

He says another highlight was just reorganizing the organization as a whole so that they were staffed properly, and they now have the right to-do lists and they’ve got a financially stable organization.

Coleman says he is also proud of the 150-year charter that the District signed with the Lhtako Dene Nation that guarantees that the two governments will work together for several generations to come.

In terms of challenges, he says it was all about building up trust levels.

“When you get a community that is struggling with all of its deferred infrastructure and the security of basic services, you know proper snow removal, all those kind of things, and just the autonomy with COVID and things like that, it’s mainly just trying to pull up the trust levels. One you get your trust levels up then things move along, they start moving, and the province, they were just 100% supportive. They sent up a liaison to help me out in the beginning when I was organizing stuff.”

Coleman feels he is leaving the District in good shape and there seems to be good interest in Wells for people wanting to come to the Council table.

He was first elected Mayor of Wells in February of 2022 during a by-election, and he was then re-elected in October of that year.