Cocks Says He Will Bring Integrity, Sound Decision Making to Council

Former city councillor Bill Cocks doesn’t like what he’s been seeing around the council table and, having served 13 years as an elected official in the Hat, he’s looking to serve another term to right the ship.

“I’m running to return to council primarily due to the disfunction that I saw amongst the council themselves and administration,” said Cocks, adding he was encouraged by Hatters to give it another go.

If elected, his priority will be building a proper work environment at city hall with hiring a new city manager, “job number one.”

Dealing with growth in the city will also be an issue Cocks would like to address.

“Medicine Hat has definitely stagnated,” he said. “We are seeing growth in Calgary – they can’t keep up with it – we’re seeing growth in Lethbridge, someone even said to me there is growth in Brooks. Why isn’t there growth in Medicine Hat?”

 Cocks says he’d like to see a plan to encourage the city growing, “both industrial business and residential – just get more people living here.”

As for the future direction of a city directed utilities division, Cocks said, “it certainly isn’t a municipally controlled corporation.

“The last council narrowly rejected that idea and, thank goodness.”

He said the idea of privatizing the city’s utility division is something that emerges every few years.

“And we spend millions of dollars – hundreds of thousands of dollars for sure – every few years examining that issue and getting a consultant to tell us, ‘You shouldn’t be running the utility, you need to hive that off to people who know what they are doing,” Cocks said.

He said the city has owned and operated the municipal utilities for over a century, it’s done a good job and it has made money for the municipality.

“And we continue to do that,” said Cocks.

On the question of gas production, Cocks acknowledged the market forces at play but continues to hold firm on the city maintaining control on the distribution side.

 He said during his former tenue on council, the fear was in not having enough gas production reserves.

“We don’t worry about that anymore. Some of our low production gas fields, we’ve started to divest ourselves from,” said Cocks.

On the issue of transparency, he said there needs to be opportunities for council to communicate with each other frankly.

“True debate will happen in open council, and all the decisions will happen in open council,” said Cocks.

As for his skill set coming into a new council term, he said he brings with him a track record of listening to Hatters, integrity and, “making sound decisions.”