A growing interest in politics and serving the public has prompted Sheldon Reinhart to enter the Swift Current City Council race.
Reinhart, who has served as the General Manager of the Elmwood Golf and Country Club for the past 12 years, feels his business background added to a growing passion for politics would provide him with a strong voice at the council table.
“It is something that I’m very passionate about. Over the years I’ve really started to enjoy politics and I though no better place to start than would be with City Council.”
He feels the current council has done a good job over the past four years and would like to move forward in the same direction.
“I feel the current City Council has done a really good job in promoting Swift Current and getting new businesses and more people to move to Swift Current, and I just want to continue with that plan.”
Reinhart says the current COVID era will certainly provide some challenges for all levels of government heading into 2021 and beyond.
“Definitely the challenges are going to be financially. We’ve got COVID and we’ve got potentially a second wave of COVID, so over the next while we’re going to just have to try and save a little bit of money for when these kinds of things happen because you can never project when the next one. We just need to be ready for anything that the world economy or anything sends our way.”
Reinhart is not campaigning with a list of focus areas except that his voice will reflect the direction residents want to see the city move towards.
“I want to be the ears. I want to be their voice at the City of Swift Current’s voice for what they’re thinking or what they want. I want to be that person to bring ideas and things forward to better our community and make Swift Current a place that people want to live and retire or bring up their families.”
He does admit that he is hearing a lot of about city debt and taxation.
“You don’t want to have a lot of debt, but also during times where if interest rates are really low you want to be able to put infrastructure and do things that maybe you couldn’t do.
“If we’re getting grants and stuff that are one time things we want to be able to use that money and build things that maybe in one, two or three years we might be having to foot the bill for the entire cost of it. So you’ve got to weigh all those opportunities and costs and figure out if it’s something that’s worth doing and go from there.”
