Red Deer Minute: Voting Info, Candidate Info, and Campaigning Heats Up

Red Deer Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Red Deer politics

This Week In Red Deer:

• Despite it being the last week before the election, Red Deer Council is still meeting. It’s going to be relatively steady in the lead up to the 2021 municipal election, with two meetings scheduled. On Wednesday, there will be a meeting of the Audit Committee and on Thursday, there will be a meeting of the Municipal Planning Commission. Unfortunately, there’s not much to report to you yet as the agendas, and even the start times, for these meetings haven’t been released yet.
  
  
• If you haven’t already had the chance to get out and vote early, you can still do so until October 16th. There are three locations (Parkland Mall, Baymont by Wyndham Red Deer, and Westerner Park) that are all open from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm each day. If you can’t make it on those days, you'll have to vote on election day: Monday, October 18th.
  
  
• To help you decide who to vote for, we sent out a questionnaire to all the Mayoral and Council candidates last week. A bunch of candidates have responded already and their answers will be going up on our website, under Election 2021 in the menu later today. We’ll upload more responses as candidates send them back to us over the next week.

Last Week In Red Deer:

• The City of Red Deer implemented a COVID-19 immunization policy last Tuesday, requiring all City staff and volunteers to be fully immunized by November 28, 2021. Interim City Manager Tara Lodewyk said that although the City had continuously enhanced measures and encouraged immunization within the organization, they had no choice but to implement further enhanced measures because they were at a point in the pandemic where the healthcare system was overloaded.
  
  
• The City also announced that all youths 12-17 who participate in combined teenage/adult activities at all City of Red Deer facilities will be screened for COVID-19. The move comes as the Government of Alberta updated its youth screening requirements under the Provincial Restrictions Exemption Program.
  
  
• Meanwhile, a virtual municipal election forum was held on Monday evening and featured four mayoral candidates: James Allen, Jeremy Moore, Buck Buchanan and Ken Johnston, as well as 24 candidates for City Council and one candidate for Public School Board trustee.

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