Rick Orr recalls first year on council

Another thing Orr is proud of in his time on council is how accessible and accountable he’s been to the citizens of Prince Albert and to the constituents in his ward.

“I return calls, I address concerns and suggestions that people bring to me I bring them forward and I try to come up with solutions.”

He said the downtown core is an opportunity for development and renewal, “I champion that, that’s my job, I’m the councillor for that ward.”

“It’s the whole idea of letting people know there is an opportunity there that the hard working people of the downtown association have worked hard on.”

Orr cited 35 new jobs in the downtown core, 10 new businesses and only four vacancies, “Those are pretty big accomplishments from my point-of-view.”

“Last January we had some really bad instances with the homeless deaths in the city and I’m really excited to see how a little bit of push has got the core and HUB intervention not only impacting crime but also working out an alcohol and homeless report,” Orr continued.

“In just recent weeks we’ve seen reports that the YWCA Our House is getting funding from other sources to provide some solution for the people that are impaired with substance abuse that have trouble finding places of safe haven, I think those are really huge things.”

He said as a ward councillor what he has to keep focused on is keeping the roads in good shape, a functioning bridge that runs through the center of his ward and “of course safe water and environment and [being] friendly to your neighbours.”

“We have to make sure that we’re good stewards to our regional neighbours.”

Orr said one of the exciting things in the last year was that the he and Mayor Greg Dionne have met with citizen groups in his ward to discuss their concerns.

“We’ve worked towards bringing solutions forward to council for some of their concerns and that hopefully we’ll see that in the new year.”

When asked what his goals are for 2014 Orr said one, is to continue to work to understand how the city operates from a budget point-of-view.

“What I think we really want to do is what people are telling us, especially people in my ward, that we got to be fiscally responsible and make sure that we’re focused on our infrastructure and upgrades. That we’re committed to making repairs to the roads that we’ve stated and it’s not the roads only, it’s what’s underneath the roads,” Orr explained.

“Speaking of the big picture, it’s kind of like our downtown; we need to champion our community as a regional economic opportunity. We need to be a part of our provinces growth strategy. We now have a divided highway to Saskatoon and this is a huge asset and an economic incubator for our regional future.”

He said it’s his hope “that we’ll come together and create an environment for business and investment and jobs that will create more housing because that’s what grows our city.”

Orr said to do that we can’t work alone.

“We have to work with our surrounding RMs and look at economic development as a region, similar to what Saskatoon has had to do, I think that’s where we need to go. You know, development we realize that more tax dollars equate to more services, more facilities for all of us to enjoy, so if we can become a part of the provincial growth we’re also going to reach out and have challenges, but the spin-offs and benefits shouldn’t be scary, we should be able to embrace them and we can’t afford to miss out on this.”

He said overall his time on council has been a steep learning curve, but the lessons learned is that the province is moving forward and everyone needs to jump on board.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid

by Sarah Wallace

Rick Orr recalls first year on council

paNOW Staff

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