Reid Ready To Listen, Be Considerate and Make the Tough Decision

Michael Reid might be relatively new to the city but has ties to the Hat through his wife while having started a fitness related business in the city’s downtown and already having helped organized events in the community.

The former school teacher said the downtown was a natural choice for him and his wife to start a new yoga studio and understands there are social concerns regarding the city centre.

“We want to create a vibrant downtown, we want to make it the place people want to come down to – whether it’s visitors or the people who live here to want to come down here to shop, eat, find their entertainment,” said Reid of his efforts along with the Downtown Collective’s.

But he’s understanding that if elected, he’ll be representing the whole city.

And, as a new small business owner, there are challenges to getting an operation off the ground throughout the city.

“When I look at some of the challenges I faced opening up my new business and some of the red tape I had to go through, finding out afterwards you didn’t have to go through all that red tape. . .But that would apply to any business whether they are downtown or not,” Reid said.

He’s had conversations with developers in which they’ve expressed similar concerns when it comes to much larger projects as well.

“When I’m hearing stories of people wanting and trying to come in and we hit roadblocks, so we went elsewhere – what are we doing here,” said Reid.

Those barriers make economic growth hard which leads to stagnation which leads to regression, he explained.

Fiscal responsibility is also on the Reid’s priority list as an issue to tackle and if large projects are on the table, there needs to be buy in from the community to support spending.

Or funds need to be found through finding efficiencies, he added.

“And maybe it comes to the fact that, no, there is no optimization, maybe this is a project for another day,” said Reid.

When it comes to the current state of transparency at city hall, Reid said it’s not always clear from a downtown business owners’ point of view as to how some decisions are made.

“How do they come up with that decision that actually negatively affects us,” questioned Reid. “Why would they do that, why wouldn’t they communicate with us.”

He says the response to that question leads back to the city stating it has done a survey. But Reid stated there still appears to be a gap in direct communications with impacted stakeholders.

And it’s something he says is also evident with the city’s Transportation Master Plan.

If elected, Reid says he’ll listen to constituents, give careful consideration to issues and make the tough decisions.

“But be able to back that decision up. Even if I have to go back to you or someone else and say, ‘I know this isn’t the answer you’re hoping for, but these are all the things we took into consideration, including what you said,’” stated Reid.