By Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

With six days remaining until election day, Wiggers having the time of his life

Oct 10, 2017 | 12:17 PM

LETHBRIDGE – Davey Wiggers says the reasons behind why he decided to run for city council are actually pretty simple.

“I want to serve the community, and I want to help shape and mold its policies. As a city, we need to allow for prosperity and growth,” Wiggers said. “I’m a pretty conscientious fellow, thoughtful, empathetic, patient and I love to help people so I can’t think of a better way to accomplish that than through public service.”

Wiggers and his family emigrated to Southern Alberta in the summer of 1981, and over the years he has worked in the consumer electronics field, tele-communications field and has pursued some entrepreneurial endeavours as well which led him to establish several businesses beginning in 2003.

Since 2012, Wiggers changed focus to the transportation industry where he’s been managing logistics issues.

Wiggers spoke forcefully about a handful of issues that are important to him in the city, including one of the major ones which is fiscal responsibility while also moving forward progressive issues.

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“I’ve always been fiscally responsible myself, or at least approached things in a fiscally responsible manner,” he continued. “I don’t like waste, especially when it comes to money. A lot of councillor candidates will tell people they’re going to fix this, and going to fix that but what they don’t realize is first off you work as part of a team. In Lethbridge, you need the support of five councillors to make anything happen, so it’s really important to be able to work as part of a team and I’ve got a history of being able to do that outside of politics,” Wiggers added.

Another issue he’d like to tackle is one that has a national stage at the moment, the opioid.

“First and foremost if I were elected, I would like to address the opioid crisis. When I say that, I’m thinking about not necessarily all the people that are addicted, but the kids that are just experimenting with drugs that will kill them on their first use. I can’t think of another thing that would be more tragic to a family than the loss of a child. This is an issue that I’m deeply passionate about. Year over year, the deaths increased so it’s got to be first and foremost in our mind. The city set up a coalition last year with many different service organizations from municipal and provincial levels of government, and even federal. That’s a great start but it’s not meant to be the end, and I want to help make sure we see this thing through so no more parents have to deal with this,” Wiggers stated.

The local economy is important to Wiggers, and he’s learned that it’s top of mind for a lot of residents in Lethbridge.

He says in business, value perception is key and when it comes to city related business it has to be as well.

“When people spend their money, they want to make sure they’re getting something of value. A big concern that I’ve heard in talking to people in Lethbridge is property taxes, ” Wiggers said. “People have asked me what I’m going to do about them because they keep going up. I’ve learned that people don’t mind paying for something if there’s value in it, but right now the perception among a lot of people is they aren’t getting proper value for their money.”

If the city announces a new road extension like Whoop Up Drive on the west side, sometimes there are cries from residents on the north side that they aren’t getting enough. Wiggers says sometimes people don’t understand that these things are being done for everyone in the city, and it’s incumbent on councillors to get that message across.

These misconceptions, according to Wiggers, lead to discussions about why the City of Lethbridge doesn’t have a ward system like Calgary and Edmonton.

“Now I’ve done some informal polls, and there’s a lot of support out there for the ward system. But if we look at the root cause of why that system is popular, it leads to back to that perception of value. People feel like if they elect a councillor who represents a ward on the north side or the west side, they’ll fight for those areas more, “Wiggers continued. “There’s some truth in that, a councillor who’s elected in a ward system is more engrained to his or her community. But, the flip side of that is the possibility of a councillor from a certain ward could stall a certain project that benefits the whole city for their own cause. I think that’s a pretty cynical outlook, and that anyone who was duly elected by the people as a councillor for the city wouldn’t stalemate the rest of the city. Just because a councillor is elected to a particular ward doesn’t mean he doesn’t still represent the entire city, it just means his focus is on his own ward,” Wiggers said adding it’s absolutely something that should be open for discussion, but it all comes back to perceived value.

Perceived value leads into the last issue that Wiggers felt he needed to address, which is the need to be accessible and accountable to people in the community.

“If I should be so lucky to be elected to council, I realize the importance of that accessibility and accountability . I think councillors on the whole should do more to be more approachable and more open. If they’re not getting the quality or quantity of feedback, then we need to find more creative ways of engaging the community to get them involved . It’s incredibly important to actually be accountable to the people that elect you, and not just in the run up to elections every four years. So when it comes to the city spending money on things, the people will be able to access that information and will already know what it’s going towards or at the very least the information will be available to the media who can convey the message to people,” Wiggers said.

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 10 and Lethbridge is now just six days away from electing a new slate of councillors. So, what has the experience been like for Wiggers?

“I’m having the time of my life, it’s like that old saying where if you ever find something you love doing it will never seem like work, this is it for me. I enjoy this so much that I’m working 20 hours a day, and I’m not exaggerating,” Wiggers jokingly added. “Over the past few weeks I’m getting four or fives hours of sleep a night, and I should be exhausted but I’m not. Connecting with people energizes me, and it really is so much fun. I can’t think of anything better than my fellow citizens voting for me, and allowing me to do this as a job for four years.”

Wiggers finished his comments on what it would mean to be a councillor by returning to a common theme.

“If you have a councillor or someone representing you who doesn’t enjoy what they’re doing, it goes back to value perception, you’re probably not getting what you paid for. You have to love what you’re doing in order to be successful is my belief. I believe that I can hit this thing out of the park to the moon and beyond, this has been the experience of a life time so far and I can’t wait for it to continue,” Wiggers said.