Tilleman campaigns on revitalization and responsible spending

Posted on October 16, 2025 by Taber Times

By Cal Braid
Taber Times
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Dale Tilleman’s campaign for a seat on town council included a visit to the Times where he discussed his thoughts on affordable housing, enforcement, infrastructure, and a new dry sport facility. Tilleman began on the subject of a dry recreation centre in Taber, which he is in favour of as long as the finances are right.

 “I think we have to come up with a certain amount of money guaranteed before we ever go to the town and ask for it,” he said.

 He advised that the project would need a good board of five to nine people that would put their egos to the side and work towards it. The board would consist of members outside of the administration with at least one councillor on it, he said. If and when the project raised 33 per cent of its costs, which could be roughly $5-6 million, Tilleman thinks the Town could then approach the residents with a plebiscite.

 “I think it would pass,” he said. “Right now, if you just said we’re gonna pay for it as a town, and you did a plebiscite, I think it wouldn’t. It’s not that it’s a bad thing, but you have to be financially responsible, right?”

 Affordable housing initiatives are something he would also support – again, under the right circumstances.

  “I am in favour, but we have to do it differently,” he said. “I don’t want to see anything like what happened at Ken McDonald that was supposed to be for lower economic status. I think that’s one of the worst cases of urban planning that we had in the province for a long time.“

 “If people are out there, some won’t have cars, so they’re stuck. If they do have a vehicle, it’s only probably one. So for most of the day, they’re stuck again. They could have taken some of the older homes, say, south of Myers high school, or to the east of the Co-op food store. There are some that are sitting there empty too.”

 He thinks the Town could purchase some of the older homes and knock them down or refurbish and renovate them. Then, whether it’s trailers or duplexes, he said those can be built in Taber and landscaped by a local business. “We’ve got people in Taber who can do that,” he said.

 Tilleman answered a question about local enforcement of traffic safety matters by repeating the question and giving a direct answer.

 “Do I feel there needs to be more enforcement of vehicles? Yes. Yeah, next (question),” he said. “I mean, you have a right to drive, but you also have a right to kind of keep your noise down to it where it doesn’t bother people.”

 When it comes to major infrastructure priorities in the community, Tilleman said, “We have to fix what we have.” He’s campaigning partly on the revitalization of the downtown area. He sees what has been done in other towns like Coaldale, Fort Macleod, and Pincher Creek and he thinks Taber should follow suit.

 “We’re in fourth place here by a distance, so yeah, we need to do something. I’d like to see us build on our unique history here, our agriculture and irrigation,” he said, visualizing ornamentation, street lamps, shrubs, and wall murals.

 “I think that’s what we do. We stick to our history. We build on that. We put up signs outside of town that say ‘travel downtown, visit the unique history of Taber’ or something like that – get people to come in a little bit more.”

 He said Coaldale could have easily become a bedroom community, but it didn’t. Instead, it invested in its core and the downtown is now busy on Saturdays. “Good for them,” he said, envisioning the same for Taber.

 In the same ‘fix what we have’ mode of thinking, he suggested that the next council fix the roads and add lights in certain parts of the town. Sidewalks would be a third priority after roads and lighting.

 As for attracting major industries and jobs to town, he’s realistic and supportive of using what’s already here. In this case – sun, soil, and water.

 “First off, we’re not going to go ahead and get Ford, GM or Dodge to relocate a factory here. We have to build on what our industries are,” he said. “First off, if you give some sort of tax holiday, even lighting or some sort of infrastructure, that all helps. But what I see out here, there’s three crops that I think that we could go ahead and try to develop: hemp, sunflower seeds, and pumpkins.”

 He proposed building a sunflower seed plant and growing hemp and pumpkins to “diversify our agriculture products. Sunflower seeds are used a lot more than just people chewing them at ball games; they make oil out of them.”

 “Let’s go ahead and (build upon) that foodstuff industry,” he said. “There might not be 100 or 200 people, but if we got 25 to 50 people working at these, that makes sense, and it hits the economy.”

 An “outside the box” idea that he put forward was recycling solar panels. “That would be what I would possibly look at as far as a futuristic type of industry. I think that that might have some merit there,” he said about a niche industry that could find a home in sunny Taber.