Kolton “The Maniac” Menzak running for mayor of Lethbridge

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Menzak told LNN that he’s interested in “making meaningful change which will positively affect the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder who have been mistreated through the years.”

He has lived his entire life in Lethbridge and has worked various jobs throughout the community, including for his grandfather, who owned a local construction business when Menzak was growing up.

He currently works for a heating company in the city and before that, earned his keep working on drilling rigs. He also boasts something else on his resume that’s led to his nickname of “The Maniac” – a background in mixed martial arts. In addition to fine-tuning his platform ahead of October’s vote, Menzak will compete in his first match since the COVID-19 pandemic hit on August 14 in Edmonton.

As far as any prior political experience, he told LNN that he doesn’t have any. However, he noted he keeps up with politics regularly.

Menzak remarked that “my point of view – not being from that background – is actually better for me because right now, we have people who have been in politics and have been studying and got a higher education, maybe in things like economics, and it doesn’t seem like these people can figure out how to not go in debt, for instance, talking about economics.”

“I think me coming from more of a common sense background and learning what they’re teaching in school, what they’ve taught in the past, why they teach that, all sorts of things like that can kind of shape my view.”

The southern Albertan graduated from Lethbridge Collegiate Institute, then finished one semester in exercise science at Lethbridge College before working on drilling rigs.

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Menzak said one of his priorities as mayor would be to lower taxes.

“I think that there’s a lot of waste and I think that with the resources we have, we can improve services without needing more funding. I think there’s lots of resources, we just need to allocate them properly and not have them go towards waste.”

He wants to clean up the downtown core of the city, having worked security in the area over the last year.

Menzak said that, “working downtown, you really get to realize how bad things are down there and how much suffering the people down there are experiencing and I’d really like to help them out and help everyone else out too who is experiencing more suffering and pain than they need to.”

He also wants to address concerns over parking at both Lethbridge College and the University of Lethbridge. “It seems like that’s a catastrophe every year, the parking is just horrible. I’ve talked to the students and they agree that they’d like to do something about that.”

Menzak told LNN he’s hoping to reallocate police officers, explaining that, “I’d like to stop issuing so many traffic fines and maybe allocate police officers towards crimes with victims, like all these thefts that are happening.”

“We seem to have lots of police sitting around for traffic but not too many to help out with all the thefts that are going on at peoples’ property. I’d like to reallocate police if I can, if it’s possible.”

When it comes to how the COVID-19 closures were handled, Menzak believes there should have been more of a focus on smaller, local businesses as opposed to big box stores.

He said that, “I don’t think we should have Wal-Mart be open while everyone else is closed.”

“I think a more common sense [restriction] where everyone can stay open at a limited capacity would have been a better approach.”

Menzak added that he wants to use resources the city has to improve on all government services and make “more decisions locally for us, that work better for us.”

The mayoral candidate is fine-tuning his Facebook page but noted that anyone interested in contacting him can do so by email at maniac4mayor@gmail.com.

The 2021 municipal elections are scheduled for October 18.

by Justin Goulet

Kolton “The Maniac” Menzak running for mayor of Lethbridge

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