With a final list of nominees on the ballot for the Estevan city council election coming up this November, one candidate is hoping to get onto the council for the first time.
Rhyan Hagel is running for a position on the council, leveraging his experience in post-secondary political settings to drive him forward.
He says he has a vested interest in Estevan and its future.
"I'm looking around, I'm seeing like a cloud of despair, the connection between the community and the government is gone. It's eroded. With municipal government, the municipalities are the backbone of our country, so a weak municipal government is a weak province. So my aims are to bring back hope that the common sense budget and to create better communication between the council and the community."
Hagel was born and raised in Estevan but has spent some time down south for higher education, which he says was his reason to get into politics.
"What ultimately got me into politics was when I attended Northwestern Oklahoma University. I attended a bunch of political science classes there, and when I was dissecting and reading the US Constitution phrase by phrase, we learned how ultimately, it's the people, and the government seems to try to pretend that the people's wishes shouldn't be granted for governmental gain. So I want to make sure that the community is still heard and that we do what's best for the community."
With enough communication from the municipal government, Hagel believes they can make a change locally.
"In order to heal the community, I believe that you need to best understand the needs of the community, so we need to get out there and talk to them, learn what's going on, learn from our failures, and actually openly admit our failures and with that, we could help with the communities and develop policies with that in mind."
A better budget is at the top of Hagel's list, with him looking for wiser spending from the council.
"I don't believe that we should be spending large sums of money on pet projects. We should always complete one major major project before we move on to a major project. We should be cutting budget expenses that aren't needed so that we can create rainy day funds for when a pipe breaks down in the middle of the road, or when all of a sudden half a sidewalk gets smashed, or when we have a huge hail and windstorm or 8 feet of snow in winter. So that we could allocate money to areas like that.
"Another issue would be job and job retention and we need to figure out a way. The town has been stagnated for over 40 years at 10,000 with non-transient populations. We relied too much on oil booms and unfortunately, the chickens have come to roost right now. So we need to figure out a way to better create local jobs and local businesses. We're the bigger city within 45 minutes, we should be gaining communities like Torquay and Beinfait to come to Estevan instead of willing to drive 2 hours to Regina."
Hagel says that he'd be a strong personality in the council who would stand by his values, and would vote against issues he thinks wouldn't benefit the city. He'd also cut any unnecessary spending in budgets if voted in.
Overall, Hagel says that he wants to see the people regain their trust in the government.
"I want to bring the community back into the municipal government. They feel like they're outcast and they feel there shouldn't be a divide. When I was growing up, there was never a huge divide like this. So I just want to let the Community know that there are still people that want to help the community that want to run for government and just please give us a chance."