President of the Multicultural Youth Society, Satish Lal is ready to make the tough decisions for the best interest of Chestermere residents if elected for city council.
“I’ve watched the city make good decisions and bad decisions, I want to make the city more efficient,” Lal said.
“My wish is that we direct the city in the best interest of the people and take it to the next level where people want to move to Chestermere,” he added. “I’ve worked with multicultural inclusive groups, everything I do is for the best interest of the people.”
Lal’s top priorities include having paramedics available 24 hours a day in the city, reduce taxes and utility rates, promote inclusiveness, ensure recreational lands remain recreational lands and improve infrastructure.
“Number one priority, we need paramedics 24 hours, that’s a requirement, and to grow paramedics and fire services to the west side of the city. The city has grown a lot and our services need to go along with the growth,” Lal said.
A significant issue Lal is prepared to address include overcrowding in schools.
“Our schools are overfull. We have nowhere to put the kids. The city is growing at a rate that we can’t keep up. Schooling has to be made a priority, this is a big problem coming up,” Lal said.
Lal is also prepared to advocate for residents living on acreages and having access to water.
“One of the biggest issues for acreages is water. We’ve been asking the city to work with us, if they can’t get us water to the acreages at least provide a fill station,” Lal said.
Adding, “Most people have gotten to the point where they sold their houses and moved on and got out of Chestermere, I love the place where I live, but water is a necessity that needs to be addressed.”
Lal believes the city needs to slow down on developments, and re-evaluate the city finances, and priorities.
“Economically we aren’t as good as where we were three years ago, people mentally, physically, and emotionally aren’t in the same frame of mind. Our priorities have shifted,” Lal said.
“We need to slow down residential development, we don’t have a commercial base of taxes, we need to attract more commercial, so we can give a break to the residential side. We can’t run a city based on residential taxes; we need to attract bigger players into town,” he said.
Adding, “We need to re-evaluate all we plan for, and really decide where our priorities should be.”
