A St. Albert resident and a former employee of various municipalities, including Sturgeon County, has put her name in the race to run for city council.
Jackie Sargent grew up in St. Albert and recently moved back to the city. She said she felt like it was her time to give back to the city in a slightly different way than she may be used to.
"I just thought coming back to St. Albert now as a resident, as an adult, that this was the right time for me to do it and contribute in a very different way," Sargent said.
She started as a legal assistant for the City of Leduc in 2001 before she became executive assistant to the mayor and city manager, and has since worked in communications for various municipalities, including Parkland County, the City of Edmonton, and most recently Sturgeon County. Her experience working within communications departments is something she feels could give her an advantage when potentially shifting to a council role.
"I think one of the advantages working in communications is that I always was the connection between the community and the organization, and in many ways I felt I was the conscience of the organization and I really worked to represent the residents as well as council and administration," Sargent said.
"So, I feel like it's just a progression of that particular role of understanding what's going on in the community but also what's going on in the organization and being able to translate to both parties."
Sargent spoke specifically about the advantage she felt her time in Sturgeon County would have.
"Especially when you're negotiating things like municipal agreements like development agreements, recreation agreements. If you can come into a space where you've got a solid relationship with the person on the other side of the table there's going to be less animosity," she said.
Engaged, not enraged, is a motto she plans to bring forward to her campaign.
"We see a lot of people really upset about council decisions, and I think it's a failing on our part for not really translating information to people in a way that they understand how it's going to impact them," she said.
Two thing she said she loves about the city are the trees, as well as its small town feel.
"All my neighbours talk to each other in my neighbourhood, you're constantly seeing people walking around saying hi to each other, helping each other out," she said. "It's just automatic, and I think that's what I really love about this community."
As councillor, she wants to help usher St. Albert's transition from a bedroom community.
"You've got the suburbs and stuff like that, people live there. They raise their families, but they end up going into the city for work. We've made a lot of progress bringing more industry in our area because we've depended a lot on residential taxes," she said.
"It's well known we've got higher taxes. So, this growth of industry I think is really important. It's going to be really important for the people living here. It's going to be especially important for future generations. It's going to help relieve some of the tax pressures."
Sargent said a priority of hers would be continuing council's spending restraint and using money wisely, but she said that she couldn't identify singular issues facing St. Albert.
"I think this is a really interesting time because there aren't any really serious contentious issues happening in the community," she said. "I think my platform is really based on a commitment to represent people to make sure we're engaging them in the right way, using money responsible, and that we're representing everybody."
