Town council candidates spar over accountability, fiscal responsibility

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Taber Times

By Trevor Busch
Taber Times
editor@tabertimes.com

A field of 11 candidates are hoping to edge out their rivals in a race to secure six councillor seats with the Town of Taber in the Oct. 20 municipal election.

Incumbents Jack Brewin, Carly Firth, Monica McLean, Daniel Remfert and Joanne Sorensen are taking on challengers Josh Antoniuk, Leanne Friesen, Phyllis Monks-Jensen, Randy Sparks, Dale Tilleman and Naomi Wiebe.

At the Oct. 1 All Candidates Election Forum at the Taber Legion Hall organized by the Taber and District Chamber of Commerce, candidates fielded a number of questions from the public about the future and direction of the community. 

Due to the number of candidates and size constraints, only candidate responses to several selected questions are able to be comprehensively included here. Each candidate was permitted to begin the forum with opening statements before pushing on to their responses to various questions. 

The initial question to the councillor candidates canvassed their ideas for downtown revitalization and beautification.

“I don’t want to put extra work on Communities in Bloom and things like that by adding too many more flowers, but I do think we need some more ideas down there,” said Naomi Wiebe. “I think that would be a good question to have a public discussion with businesses about because businesses in the community are the ones that know how things are going and what needs to be changed to make them more successful.”

josh antoniuk

“One of the cool things about being a candidate is people coming up to me with issues, and I just have my little book,” said Josh Antoniuk. “And whenever someone says something, I write it down. One of them said that there was the Taber citizen walkabout, where it was recognizing the people of the community and what you do. And they were saying some of the people from Taber Special Needs, that the sidewalks weren’t even a place where – some of them, they had to lift up their feet, or their walkers, they couldn’t access the sidewalks. So I would start with there. I think anything’s as strong as your weakest chain. And you just find what the people say is the bottom one, and you fix that, and then you go to the next one and the next one. So flowers are great and Communities in Bloom, they do amazing things, but fix the things that need to be fixed.”

“The focus definitely hasn’t been within the downtown core,” said Randy Sparks. “The focus of beautification has been everywhere but the downtown core. The downtown core of the Town of Taber at one time was very vibrant and very active and very alive, but over the years, that has changed. Things have moved away. Things have moved south. They moved east. But we can’t forget the downtown core. We need to get together with the people who run businesses in the downtown core, collaborate with them, see what their future focus is, and do what we can as a town council to assist them in bringing more business and more beautification as other communities within southern Alberta – Coaldale, Fort Macleod, Bow Island – they’ve all done it. If they can do it, the Town of Taber can do a much better job than they can.”

“I think that there is more to be done with the bulb-outs and the trees downtown, it certainly looks a lot more inviting, but I don’t know what that’s actually doing to drive business downtown, and Council’s solutions are only half of it,” said Carly Firth. “We need buy-in from local businesses. We need them to want to beautify their storefronts. Community Futures is partnered with the Town of Taber and we can provide grants for businesses to improve their facades or improve the look of their building. We also have a plan that businesses can access to create a unified theme downtown so that it looks cohesive, it looks like everything belongs, and maintaining that infrastructure too, I think, is really key.”

“So I’m actually vice chair of Community Futures Chinook, and we do have a very expensive loan program for beautification of the buildings, and we started with the downtown, and I think it’s been expanded out because we actually weren’t getting enough applicants always downtown, and you want to use up your funding that you have, so you make sure that when a business wants to do improvements and they apply for a loan, you give them that loan, right?” said Phyllis Monks-Jensen. “But I do feel like there is some more to be done in our downtown, things like possibly influencing some of the business owners downtown to fix up their structures, just even the broken glass, the sidewalks, is a very big thing. We also deal with someone in a wheelchair and they can’t get to and from different places. The parking for barrier free isn’t always available in the downtown, and the businesses aren’t open late enough to make for a thriving downtown, so it depends on that mix as well.”

“First off, I sit on Town Council, and we have a program, a policy with our tax initiative, if you renovate your space, you get property tax decrease on what you increase the value of your business,” said Daniel Remfert. “So we’re doing that right now. So the council’s doing that right now, supporting the Chamber of Commerce is great to help us in the downtown. We also support Communities in Bloom. But the biggest thing I would have to say, as a business owner downtown, when you guys shop downtown, eat downtown, right? You know that’ll help. We got to do it. That’ll help our businesses get supported downtown. They will make that income. They will be able to invest in their own business. They will see that. Council’s doing their job. It’s up to us, too.”

“Fellow candidates have made some great, fantastic points. Downtown is very important to the heart of the city,” said Jack Brewin. “When I was little kid, I remember going downtown and I was in the big city. But times have changed, and things have moved off to different areas of Taber, but downtown should still be the heart of the city. I like the beautiful beautification program with the shrubs, and that is a good idea, but they do have to be maintained, so there’s cost to that. When you drive around downtown on the weekends, on a Saturday, it’s like driving through tombstones. You see a tumbleweed. We’ve got to encourage our businesses to open on Saturdays and perhaps Sunday so people don’t go up to Lethbridge to do their shopping, because Lethbridge is fairly close. It’s an easy drive down twinned highways. The Community Futures loan is a great program. I wish more people would take advantage of it and beautify our downtown and keep it vibrant.”

“Obviously I work with the chamber and the local first initiative, our main focus was making people go and shop in our local businesses,” said Joanne Sorensen. “So that’s the driver, and Councillor Remfert hit that right on the nose. I would like to invest more in business vitality, retaining and growing businesses in Taber, supporting local, obviously local first, Taber grown. So supporting that, I’m also thinking that we need to invest more in technology. So part of that is the initiative of bringing free Wi-Fi downtown, and so I’d like to grow that, because obviously technology is a huge factor in new businesses and supporting the our local economy is also technology driven.”

“It hasn’t been a focus for the past Town Council. We need to dial it up,” said Dale Tilleman. “Years ago, I used to go ahead and get my teeth done in in Coaldale, and I remember going there because I taught school. And that would be almost like you’re driving through Grassy Lake, Hays or Enchant, there was nobody there. And I think it’s kind of what it is downtown here in Taber. Hand it to Coaldale, they’ve done a great job. There’s a lot more traffic in the downtown area. So those who doubt or don’t think it worked, it worked there. And if anybody could have mailed it in, it’s Coaldale, the proximity to Lethbridge. Our history is unique, and I think it’s a great thing we can build up. And I think we have to not just kind of talk around it. It needs to be more of a focus.”

“Our downtown is the core of our town, and so we do need to focus on it,” said Monica McLean. “My fellow councillors have already talked about a lot of the grant opportunities and funding opportunities that are available through the Community Futures Program, through Communities in Bloom, and all the work that they have done to help beautify our town, it really does go a long way making it so people want to spend more time downtown is important. And the way that we can do that is through more beautification, through improvements of the sidewalks and the roads. Better lighting is important, the walkability is also important. Focusing on those things draws then more people into our downtown.”

“Being a business owner myself, a lot of it is you guys,” said Leanne Friesen. “We need to start talking to business owners, letting them know what’s available, showing them what can be done and how it can be done, and communicating with the businesses themselves. We can all sit here and say there’s all these grants and stuff available, but as a business owner, if you don’t know that, it’s pretty hard to access them. So I feel like a lot of it needs to come from Council itself and the town and all these different groups approaching the different businesses and actually showing them what there is available, and trying to help them with that so that they can best fix their businesses themselves. Yes, sidewalks and parking are definitely an issue downtown for a lot of people, especially elderly people that are tripping on curbs and finding it hard to find parking spaces close to businesses as well.”

In a subsequent question, council candidates were asked to detail how they would ensure that every tax dollar is used effectively and provides value for residents.

“Towards that, what would be effective to who, because my priorities might be different than anyone else’s down the table. So I feel like that’s a very vague and hard question to answer,” said Naomi Wiebe. “I guess I would have liked a little more specificity on it, if they had something that they were specifically thinking about, a program that’s not working efficiently.”

“To be honest, I think my financial background, I have the ability to look at numbers and be able to do analysis and be able to look at that” said Josh Antoniuk. “So I would just like to add to what’s already there. Not take anything away, but just add. And to be honest, I don’t know a program – not being on council, I hope to  have that opportunity yet, so I’m not just going to say something, make something up.”

“One of the best ways to make sure your tax dollars are spent wisely is to take those revenues you’re getting from taxation very, very seriously,” said Randy Sparks. “They’re coming from residents of the Town of Taber so Council and those who are making the decisions regarding tax dollars must be very vigilant in making sure that every tax dollar is spent wisely, that the efficiencies are where they are, and there’s all kinds of ways to be efficient. Employees can be efficient. We have great employees in the Town of Taber. They need to be efficient in their duties. All the leaders within the town need to be efficient. Tax dollars are very vital and important to each one of us as a resident of the Town of Taber, and the leadership of this town must make sure that they are spent wisely and prudently.”

“One of the most important ways to ensure your tax dollars are used effectively is to prioritize projects that will benefit the majority of the people,” said Carly Firth. “And I know everybody has a different idea about what those priorities are, and that’s the challenge of being on council, is to try and figure out what the right answer is, also contributing to infrastructure so that you’re not just spending today, but you are looking forward so that you don’t have those catastrophic failures that can be so devastating for a community, and balancing the level of service with the tax dollars that are spent. So everybody’s always quick to say I pay my taxes, my taxes go up. How come my road isn’t plowed? Well, we really try to do the best that we can with what we have. And I assure you, we are very careful with how we spend .”

“That’s a good one. I mean, everything is important to the person that it’s important to, right?” said Phyllis Monks-Jensen. “So now we’re going to take a pool of this money, and we’re going to figure out where it’s best spent. So we’re going to rely on input from the staff. They’re out in the public. They’re doing their diligence with their positions. They are hopefully working on an asset management plan. They’re cycling the replacement of vehicles there, cycling replacing areas of sidewalk and road maintenance and repair. I have a personal beef with salting and not actually plowing the roads, but that’s from my experience somewhere else. So I don’t know (but) we want to be as effective as we can. We want to look at the tax dollars that we have. I think one of the ones that council recently did was the sale of water rights and SMRID. It’s a boon to the town where that money goes, it’s going to be important who figures out where it goes.”

“I’m going to go with accountability. Two years ago, I ran a platform of housing and growing the town,” said Daniel Remfert. “Taxes are lower. Houses are being built, businesses are being built. Youth organizations are being supported. So accountability, the citizen’s interaction with council, these elections, go out there and vote, vote for the people that you believe will be accountable, will be effective. I’ve proven in what I’ve said I was going to do. That’s happened over the last two years. So you guys hold us accountable, and we’ll spend it effectively.”

“That’s a very, very good question. Councils – I’ve been on for three terms now, I think we’ve been fairly prudent with the money we spend,” said Jack Brewin. “Lots of thought goes into some of these decisions. One of my biggest pet peeves with spending tax dollars is study, study, study, let’s make up our mind and get something done and not waste time doing studies. Taxes in the Town of Taber are actually very well managed, in my opinion. We have one of the lowest taxes in the province every year when we do our budgets. Our goal is to keep the taxes as low as we possibly can. But roads need to be plowed, things need to be fixed, so we do our very best to keep taxes spent where they should be spent.”

“Something that pops to mind is The Meadows. So that was quite a big investment of tax dollars,” said Joanne Sorensen. “Unfortunately COVID hit, and the sales just were delayed. So as council, we had to think fast on our feet and come up with a different way of moving the land so that we can start selling and getting, hopefully, some low income housing available to the residents, because obviously, there was a huge shortage of affordable housing in the area. Another thing would be that the water clarifier needed to be repaired, and it’s a huge cost, and we needed to get it done immediately. So I asked council or administration to maybe perhaps look at the assets and create a management plan in being proactive, not reactive, so that we can plan for things that need to be repaired.”

“In my opening speech, I mentioned something called zero based budgeting, and what that would mean is the fact that they have to be detailed as far as every segment or every aspect of the budget,” said Dale Tilleman. “So some of the aspects in the last budget, looking at them they’re pretty general. I’ll give you one example. It talked about $75,000 towards maintenance of a park, but it doesn’t state where the money is going to be spent on equipment or structures or shrubbery, so something like that would come out of the budget. When the managers or the administrators come in and present a budget, they should know that, like some of you people have had the experience of reproducing your notes for an exam. So I think that would be one way to ensure that our dollars are spent more efficiently. And the last one, talk to the workers, they’ll tell you where the money can be saved. I think that that’s a resource that hasn’t been tapped into very much by administration, possibly even the council themselves.”

“Getting as much information as possible really makes us decide on how to effectively and efficiently spend tax dollars asking tough questions,” said Monica McLean. “That’s also a way to ensure that they are used effectively and making sure where are we actually going to spend the money. Where does it need to go? Looking at the priorities of the members of the community, is this meeting the resident’s needs? Those are the priorities, and that’s where the money and taxpayer’s money should go. Being proactive, we are getting an asset management program in place so that we do know where the needs will be coming, so that we are then saving for those needs and putting money aside to replace infrastructure like buildings and roads, and so that we are prepared for the future.”

“I feel our tax dollars just need to be used on priorities, but not on my priorities, on what people around the community actually want, what they see, what the people that work for the town and are dealing with all the problems around town constantly, what they’re seeing and what they need,” said Leanne Friesen. “And I just feel like it’s those people are the ones that we need to contact and talk to and get our information from before we prioritize what we want.”

The 11 candidates would also answer questions on opportunities for economic growth, the status of the Taber and District Chamber of Commerce’s building project, and ensuring professionalism and accountability for council members.

For those who might have been unable to attend, the election forum was livestreamed and can be found online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWMf_ZDGjYg