David Gillan has been a director of finance in both North Battleford and Battleford over the last six years, and it is that inside experience he hopes to bring if elected mayor of North Battleford.
“I’m leaving my professional career to do this, to find the real change,” said Gillan, who is hoping to make a shift from the administrative ranks to elected office.
“So many people have come up to me and said, Dave, you know how it works inside can you please run and try and find short term solutions and long terms solutions to this,” said Gillan, whose background includes an M.B.A. as well as international corporate experience with large companies in Asia.
His pitch is that he can put that administrative knowledge to use as a “full-time” mayor. He has already given notice to Battleford that he is leaving his role with the town. Moreover, Gillan made it known he would not be someone coming into the mayor’s chair needing to brush up on the issues, or needing any on the job training.
“At the end of the day, I walk in the day after the election and go to work. I know who everybody is, I know exactly what their jobs are, I know what the issues are. Of course I’ve been away three years — there’s always a few projects I’m not aware of or whatever. But generally speaking, I don’t need orientation to go to work, that’s the thing. I’m not clouding it with the job at the town of Battleford. For me, it’s the city’s business, and every day I’ll work at it.”
Particularly, Gillan is motivated by a desire to affect change in a number of areas, such as on the crime issue. He made it known he is concerned about the reputation the city has due to the Crime Severity stats.
“When I talk about crime and I talk about this image of the city, it’s actually the whole region because this ‘Crimetown’ image affects everybody,” said Gillan. “Collectively, the region has this big black cloud on top of it, right?”
“Unless someone full-time is going to work on this and try to address it for myself I don’t know there’s any other candidate with the inside knowledge that I have, and willing to stop full-time, and work at this. I’m coming out of my profession to help the community full-time to finally deal with this issue.”
Gillan has released his platform and it includes a number of policies. In dealing with the crime issue, Gillan advocates some short term and long term actions. In the short term, he says they can “challenge the status quo,” ensure all policing resources are accountable and coordinated, research the best practices in other similar sized communities, and develop a new model of community led policing.
For the long term, he advocates encouraging affordable sport and creative arts activities to reduce generational crime, and to ensure City Hall “act as a catalyst to mobilize a collective city to fight this problem.”
Another platform plank is attracting good paying jobs. Gillan says one way to attract those jobs is through industry development.
“We really need to find industry as well to replace things like Maple Leaf and things like that,” said Gillan, pointing to the Maple Leaf Foods plant that was shut down years ago.
“There’s a lot of companies overseas that want to do light manufacturing in Canada and the U.S., and assembly work,” said Gillan. “All these things to avoid tariffs and avoid taxes and to reduce shipping costs and all kinds of reasons. But you have to know where these people congregate and how to get to them, and how to speak their language. Again, something no other candidate can do but me — it’s just because of my unique background.”
Finally, Gillan’s platform calls for improving service delivery for services such as potable water, sanitary sewer, fire protection, transportation networks, parks and recreation and personal/property safety.
“I want to make sure City Hall is a very service-friendly place,” said Gillan, who made clear not to expect a spending spree at City Hall if he is elected.
“We have to be very frugal with our spending and we have to watch all our spending. Of course I’m an accountant by trade, and all these things, so of course you know I’m going to be prudent on money right? So I won’t spend a nickel if I don’t have to, because that’s my personal way of doing things.”
Above all else, Gillan is seeking an improvement of the way things are done at City Hall, citing that there is “always a need to continuously improve every organization”.
“It’s time for a real serious change,” said Gillan. “These are obviously some of the bigger issues, but obviously there is a lot of work to do to make any organization better.”
