Nancy Wirtz
Nancy Wirtz and her husband have lived in Killarney for the past 10 years. “I came for the job and stayed,” she laughed. With a degree from Lakehead University in outdoor recreation, she arrived in the community to take up a position at Killarney Mountain Lodge and fell in love with the region.
Ms. Wirtz said that she sees the need for economic development for the region as being primary among her platform issues. She has continued her education in the area of economic development and served on the region’s economic development committee. “The area has gone through a lot of changes in recent years,” she said. The challenges facing the area are complicated by the seasonal nature of local employment opportunities. “We have developed an economic development strategy,” she said. “I sat with the economic development committee and we developed a lot of ideas. Now I want to be a part of starting to implement some of those ideas.”
Ms. Wirtz said there is a strong benefit to maintaining an open dialogue with all parts of the community. “There are definitely parts of the community that feel left out,” she said.
The challenges facing the community include the aforementioned economic development, particularly in light of the vast geographic area that the municipality covers. “Each of the areas are very different and have different needs,” she said. “There is the town centre in the village, with a more ‘urban’ set of municipal services to maintain, but then there are the cottagers in the outlying areas where it is difficult to offer the same kinds of services.”
She said that she believes strongly in “Keeping the ‘public’ in public service.” This is the key catchphrase behind her campaign. “I believe that strong communication is key to success. Maintaining an open dialogue between municipal council and community members and sharing information freely is essential to truly representing the public. Public meetings, print materials and website updates should be used to engage and citizens of major initiatives and issue the impact them and this should be done in timely manner. I also feel that the public question period should be reinstated and that closed meetings be avoided unless necessary as outlined in the Municipal Act.”
Ms. Wirtz said that the public question period at council meetings provided a measure of direct democracy that she feels is essential to encourage an engaged electorate.
She has set up a website at nancywirtz.com where her complete platform can be found and where she plans to update her campaign messages in response to the concerns she finds at the doorstep.
In order to address the issue of geography, Ms. Wirtz has also set up a series of meet the candidates’ sessions that she hopes will enable people to learn more about the candidates and to make informed decisions, details of those sessions can also be found on her website.
