Councillor Deb McIntosh is eager to run for office again. McIntosh has been a Castlegar City Councillor since 2002. She has worked as the manager of the Castlegar and District Heritage Society for the past 17 years and is also involved with many local charities such as the Community Harvest Food Bank, Emergency Shelter, and New Vision Housing Society.
McIntosh is proud of many of the accomplishments of council over the last several years.
"The biggest thing, I think, is running the services over to the airport lands. That's one of the big things we wanted done and that's happening now," she said. "Everything is such a process with municipal government as with any government. Everything takes so long to get done. So it's nice to see that happening."
The Official Community Plan (OCP) and the Millennium Park walkway work are among other projects she is pleased with.
"You know we got a lot accomplished in this last term," said McIntosh.
As for some of the main issues that the next council will have to work on, McIntosh puts health care and affordable housing at the top of the list.
"We don't really have a mandate to deal with housing and/or the social service part of government although we all appreciate the fact that they are all our citizens. It's just never been the mandate of the city to look into that," said McIntosh. "I think through the OCP that has been truly identified as a need. We can work together with different levels of government towards something there."
Health care is always an important issue for any community, said McIntosh.
"There's always talk of having a new hospital in our area whether it be in Nelson, Trail or Castlegar," she said. "As Russ stated in his (interview with the Castlegar News in last week's paper) Castlegar would be the logical point for a new hospital, but also how do we get more services into the area. If a hospital is going to be 20 years down the road, how do we keep working with government in a pro-active way to continue to have services here."
McIntosh praised the work of community members that rallied around the X-Ray technician "fiasco."
"It really makes a difference when we can work with the community and the community can work with us to fight for better services and everything we need to have," she said.