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Fairburn seeks a council seat

City council candidate Tanessa Fairburn says she’d like to be an advocate for the disadvantaged.
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Tanessa Fairburn

City council candidate Tanessa Fairburn says she’d like to be an advocate for the disadvantaged.

Fairburn, who is taking her first run at council, wants to make issues of minimum wage, the concerns of seniors, students and the state of education a priority.

“I want to be an advocate for those people,” she says.

Fairburn isn’t sure that policies around increasing the tax base will benefit those groups.

“I don’t think making it a bigger town will make it easier to deal with,” she says, adding she doesn’t think Williams Lake has a greater proportion of disadvantaged people but whatever can be done to help should be.

“I’ve seen both sides of life. How hard it is to get out of one into the other and how hard it is to become financially independent and in other ways and I want to help.”

Fairburn points out that big box stores are known to bring in minimum wage jobs where employee turnover is high.

Instead, she’d like to help local businesses to expand which she says keep profits local rather than move them out to corporate offices.

Fairburn also hopes to push for more clean energy projects, ensuring the local environment remains healthy and increasing public transparency on those commitments.