Municipal Elections 2017: Cowansville
Four candidates are looking for votes in the race to become mayor of Cowansville right now. Outgoing councilors Sylvie Beauregard and Corinne Labbé are both vying for the top spot against former councilors Réjean Lehoux and Guy Patenaude.
Asked about the main issues facing the community, all four candidates expressed clear concerns about the health of Davignon Lake and the size of the municipal debt. Beauregard framed her concerns as part of a broader need for more attention placed on protecting the local environment, including the way the municipality deals with residential waste, while encouraging economic development through job creation for young families. Lehoux and Patenaude, meanwhile, both also expressed a need for greater municipal funding for community organizations to help support an aging local population.
Where candidates generally seemed to agree on the key issues, they all had their own reasons to share for what makes them the best person to solve the city’s problems.
Beauregard pointed out that she has
been a municipal councilor for eight years but put more emphasis on her 25 years as director of SOFIE, the local industrial training organization. She highlighted work with the chamber of commerce as well as local women and children’s health centres as evidence that she is well versed both in the business and social needs of the community.
Labbé leaned on her four years as a councillor as well as her professional work as a business advisor, stating that she was the only person on the most recent council that expressed any real concern about the city’s debt level.
Lehoux also comes to the table with past council experience, although his dates back farther. Rather than focus on that experience, however, the candidate underlined his involvement in the local effort to keep Cowansville’s courthouse. He also pointed to his role as co-founder of the historical society and his presence as a local business owner
Patenaude argued that he has more council experience than any of his opponents, having previously been mayor of another municipality as well as being a past Cowansville council member. This, he said, means that he has a better knowledge of the rules elected officials need to follow.
Looking to the future, Patenaude said that he would like to rally the future council behind a project to open a large outdoor farmer’s market in the downtown. He noted that the main grocery stores have moved to the fringes of the community and said that a downtown market would bring people together. Coming back to the issue of the lake, the candidate added that he would like to see the city build retention basins to help keep Lake Davignon clean.
Lehoux’s vision of the future was focused on supporting and developing the local English-speaking population. The local business owner identified the English community as a major asset in Cowansville and said that economic development with a focus on supporting that community is vitally important. He also said that he would like to see the city push for a more efficient route from the Bromont airport to Route 139, stating that the existing path along the Adamsville road is inefficient and detrimental to community development.
Labbé said that Cowansville has just gone through a big session of infrastructure development, and so her dream is one of making sure that the community takes care of what it already has over the coming decades. Though she framed that in the context of recent development, she later added the idea of protecting the local environment, including heritage trees and the lake, into the same concept, saying that what the city needs is a sustainable development plan.
Beauregard, meanwhile, said that she wants to see Cowansville become a community that is healthy in all aspects of life, from economic balance to the physical activity of its residents. She said that she dreams of a future in which people seek the community out as a positive living environment.
Marie-france Beaudry, Yvon Pepin have both maintained their council seats through acclamation while Daniel Marcotte was newly acclaimed in the Fordyce district. The town’s Ruiter District has three new candidates in Claude Houle, Philippe Mercier, and Denis Pepin. Jeanne Ducharme is running against current councillor Lucille Robert in the Sweetsburg District and Bruck District residents have to decide between Chaben Bédard Mohamed, Marc-andré Lacroix, and Stéphane Lussier, none of whom was a member of the most recent council.