An open letter to my fellow Red Deerians,

Serving as your Mayor for the past eight years, and as a City Councillor for the nine years preceding has been an incredible honour; I am grateful to the people of the city that we are fortunate to call our home for the opportunity to govern as your chief public servant and to represent you as our city’s ambassador to our province and country.  After seventeen years of elected service, I have decided to conclude my municipal service in order to pursue my next professional opportunity.

The people of our city have been my life’s focus for nearly two decades, and I want to thank all our citizens for trusting me with the honour of leading our city. In seeking public office, my prevailing purpose has been to provide common sense solutions, bridge-building, people-first local government, principles that I strongly believe we need in provincial and federal government as well.

I am profoundly humbled by the many citizens who have reached out to me over the last few weeks and months encouraging me to seek re-election.  Your messages of support and hope for our city mean the world to me. Please know that the sunset on this season of my public service will mark the dawn of new possibilities for me to give back to our community.

I would also like to thank my Council colleagues, our City of Red Deer staff, and especially my amazing team in the Mayor’s Office, for their devotion to our public. Public service is rarely easy and is not for the fainthearted, but it is always worth it.

We have come through an incredibly challenging time. At times we were in it together, and at others it grieves me to observe that we were not; however, I am confident that we are on the imminent horizon of finding our way back to community.

However, challenges are not, nor will they ever be, our full community story.  Over the past couple of years, our community has achieved so much, we have: pulled together to envision and fulfill our city’s largest infrastructure build in our community’s history (I’m particularly proud we were able to do this by attracting new investment to our city, not through local tax burden), successfully advocated to ensure that Red Deer’s longstanding provincial and federal infrastructure deficits are addressed, and completely overhauled our city’s laws and modernized City services to ensure our community possibilities became our reality; our hard work, common sense, people-first, find-our-way-to-yes approach will pay future dividends through the transformations, some even generational, that we collectively secured through our commitment to community building.

The next Council will have both opportunities and challenges, without a doubt. However, if they pull together, if we pull together, as the community that I know we are, and build on the foundation that we have firmly established, the next generation of community possibilities will also become our reality. Today, I can proudly assert and leave with confidence in the knowledge that we are on the threshold of hope and optimism. Within the next four years:

• Our modernized and financially sustainable City services will position our next Council to pursue new and innovative opportunities and services for our citizens.
• The catalysing investments underway in Capstone will mark the beginning of our new downtown and transformed community life.
• The justice centre under construction will transform our downtown economy, bring job stability and improve the administration of justice for our community.
• The residential treatment centre will help resolve the many life-altering personal and public consequences of additions we are facing.
• The first phase of hospital expansion will help close the health services differential in cardiac care that Central Albertans have contended with for many years.
• RDC’s transition into a Polytechnic will mean that we not only keep our degree-bound population, but will also attract new population and further stabilize our local economy through new jobs.
• The private sector construction currently underway due to The City’s new building and revitalization incentives will benefit our tax base for decades to come.
• The people of Red Deer will assume ownership over the Michener North lands, protecting and reimagining this important and historic public park node, providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our community.
• The G.H. Dawe Centre renovation and expansion will mark the completion of the upgrades of all existing City recreation infrastructure, positioning us for the next generation of new infrastructure (and, yes, our recent Council decisions will position a future Council to build the aquatics centre, ceasing a 20-year debate).
• Our recent agreements and new opportunities with our local indigenous community are foundational for our new era of relationship and reconciliation.
• The construction of the 24/7 emergency shelter we have secured infrastructure funds for will significantly help to resolve the consequences of the social infrastructure deficit that vulnerable citizens, downtown businesses, and services providers are facing. Recent, key decisions of Council will also help resolve the affordable housing shortage in our community.
• We are making progress on systematically addressing many of our ongoing safety challenges, but the next term will allow us to experience the results of many new initiatives and pilots underway to return our city to safety, if we remain steadfast.
• World Juniors, among other national and international events that we are poised to welcome, will bring the international community together and reignite the power of sports to bring community and country together once again and strengthen our local tourism economy.
• We will need to sustain our joint community fight to return ambulance dispatch to local communities. This is a life and death matter. My advocacy on this front will not cease with my Mayorship. I will continue to voice this issue as a private citizen and in my next professional spheres of influence.

There will be time in the coming weeks for me to recount what I am especially proud of during my Mayorship, and to reflect on the adversities we have overcome that I firmly believe will prove to refine and not define us. For now, though, in both life and leadership, there is a common question that we all must recon with: did I leave it better than I found it? Today, I confidently turn the page knowing that I have kept the promises I made to you in the past five municipal elections. The history we have written together will one day have the perspective of time, and I trust the the prevailing answer will point to the transformation that we have achieved together in our city over the past eight years.

While I am moving on in title, I will remain a steadfast advocate for the city we are fortunate to call our home. My mandate from you as your Mayor marked the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for me, and I am profoundly grateful to you all for the strong trust you have given me throughout the past 17 years. It has been an incredible and treasured chapter, and I am anticipating all that is to come in my next one with you.

With gratitude, my citizens.

Your Mayor,

Her Worship, Mayor Tara Veer

City of Red Deer