Coun. Surinderpal Rathor has been on city council for six terms and hopes to win a seat to make it seven.
“The desire to serve the community is still there,” Rathor says, adding he sees himself more as a volunteer than a politician. In addition to serving on council, he is also a volunteer in other areas of the community, such as helping low-income people file their taxes though the income tax program.
He says the key issues are accountability, economic development, financial stability and financial accountability.
He commits to also continue strong relations between the City and all levels of government; continue working with the Interior Health Authority for providing more meaningful health-care facilities and recruitment of health-care professionals; explore housing opportunities for seniors and others in need; continue working with law enforcement agencies to make Williams Lake a safer community to raise families; and remove unnecessary red tape and barriers to bring economic prosperity to the community.
Other important issues, he says, are infrastructure, seniors housing, job creation and making the tax base bigger.
He says the current council “has failed” to do anything to improve economic development and is critical of the recently established Business Expansion and Attraction Task Force, saying it was put into place at the “11th-and-a-half hour,” about a month before the general election.
“We have to create an atmosphere where people with a bag full of money can come to our society and develop, which will help not only to increase our tax base but it will also create more jobs,” he says, adding that when more people have jobs, the crime rate drops.