Esterhazy Mayor Grant Forster was re-elected by acclamation this fall. He spent nine years as a councillor before taking over as mayor in a by-election in 2018.
“I feel like I’ve only just started," Forster said. "I came in mid-term because of the by-election and haven’t had the opportunity to get a full taste of what’s going on. We had a lot of things that needed to get taken care when I first came in and I’m hoping now that all that’s done we can start looking at doing things for the long term to do things better for the town.
“We need to get on that water treatment plant, which we’re going to be starting soon one way or the other, whether we get the infrastructure grant for it or not. There’s other things, like we need to make a long-term decision on our dump and just different things that need some focus, apart from putting out fires. That’s sort of why I wanted to come back, just to be able to put my input and stamp on some of these things that we’re going to need as a community for the long-term.”
Forster has always been a community oriented person and saw running for mayor as an opportunity to take his next step in helping the Town of Esterhazy further grow and develop to reach its potential.
“Throughout my lifetime I’ve been very involved in community activities and different things like that,” he said. “I’ve always considered myself someone who could be counted on to get stuff done and somewhat of a leader. I think I have pretty good support from the residents in our community and they’ve known me throughout the years and trust that I can do what I’m wanting to do.
“I think for me it’s something that I want to do and think that I can do. When I got elected I was unsure in myself that I could do the job, but arrogant enough to think that I could at the same time. I have a pretty good history of getting stuff done around town in my lifetime and I think that this is just the next step in getting all of that done.”
Although Forster says they haven’t completed any of their big plans yet, he says this council has laid the groundwork for some more extensive projects down the road while also helping to better the community through smaller projects.
“There’s a lot of small things that we’ve done,” he said. “We kicked off the arena project to be able to raise enough funds to be able to go through and improve that after announcing it almost two years ago now. Just getting to the state where we are with the water treatment plant. It’s been something that’s been kicking around for a lot of years and in the two years that I’ve been here we’ve taken it from the point where this is what we have to do to now where we’re at the point where we have the concept and we have the design and we’re just waiting on the funding. That’s a big one that I think we’ve put a lot of time and effort into.
“There’s also been some smaller things. Infrastructure wise with our dog park, that was a huge improvement for the town and people are taking advantage of that. Things like the outdoor arena being resurrected.
“There was a number of us that came onto council at the same time with myself and (Councillor) Tenille (Flick) and our new CEO (Acting Administrator) Mike (Thorley) and our rec director (Brenda Redman),” he said. “There was a lot of changes thanks to what those two (Thorley and Redman) have done as well as council. Those are some of the things that are noticeable and it just feels like it’s a different town in the last couple of years with fresh bodies in the right spots. I think that’s as big a thing as any and there’s been a lot of things done with a fresh approach and I think the town appreciates that.
“We’ve got a good council with lots of different ideas and we take different approaches to things and we have different areas of interest. We’ve got a lot of passion and I think it’s showing.”
