Sitting on council can be a thankless job. The wages are low. The time commitment is high and as a councillor you often find yourself on the receiving end of complaints from community members.
So why put your name on the ballot?
If you ask Gloria Kongsrud, who retired from politics in 2009 after serving for 33 years, she’d tell you it’s about stepping up when it matters.
“You want to have the best little municipality in Alberta and if that’s what you want, then you better be there to work at it.
“And if you don’t like the way things are being done, then you better be sitting at the table to change those things and if you have really strong feelings about how things should be done, then you better stay there and continue on with your work.”
For Kongsrud, it was for the betterment of her son’s education that she entered politics.
“He started school in 1976 and at the time I was really pushing to have French immersion...so that’s why I let my name stand for election back then.” That was during the days of the Jasper Town Committee—25 years before the town was incorporated as a specialized municipality.
During her time with the committee and later with council, Kongsrud said there were many projects that she took pride in seeing through to the end.
Her last one was the Alpine Summit Seniors’ Lodge.
“I was the first one from Jasper to sit on [the Evergreen Foundation’s board]. In my mind, my goal was to have a facility here. So I was pushing for that. And then after it was built, I thought, that’s fine for me. Now it’s time for me to leave.”
Following her retirement in 2009, she said she went through withdrawals, wishing she was still a part of the action.
“It’s a really rewarding job,” she said, acknowledging that it’s also a tough one. “There’s a lot of sleepless nights, for sure, but I learned over the years not to take things to heart and your skin gets a little bit tough.”
Mayor Richard Ireland, who was first elected to the Jasper Town Committee in 1989 and has been mayor since Jasper was incorporated in 2001, agreed with Kongsrud, saying there are both rewards and drawbacks to being an elected official.
“For everybody it’s a personal matter whether the rewards outweigh the costs, and there are costs: frustration is one, time is another and the opportunity cost. You weigh all of that against the rewards.
“Personally, although the rewards are sometimes hard to find, they’ve always been enough.”
One of the greatest rewards, he said, is being a part of such a passionate team of people working for a common goal—improving the community and making it the best it can be.
There is also, on occasion, gratitude from the community—“occasionally there’s a thank you and when there is it’s gold,” said Ireland, noting that because the thank-yous are few and far between, you have to establish your own reward system.
“You have to have that internal sense that you’re doing a public service.
“You have to be OK with doing the right things for the right reasons and you have to be prepared to follow through.”
Nomination forms for the Oct. 21 municipal election are due Sept. 23. They are available by contacting Beryl Cahill, Jasper’s returning officer, at [email protected].
To run, the Local Authorities Election Act stipulates that you must be 18 years of age, a Canadian citizen, and a resident of Jasper for the six consecutive months before nomination day.
Nicole Veerman
[email protected]
