By Chris Lewis|August 5, 2021
After trying her hand a couple of times in provincial politics as the PC candidate in Fortune Bay – Cape La Hune, realtor Charlene Walsh is putting her bid in for a seat on Mount Pearl City council.
Walsh said she has lived in Mount Pearl for some 30-years and would like to be part of the city government, which sees as an agent for change.
“I thought this would be a good match for me, for sure,” Walsh said.
Walsh said one of the biggest things she has heard discussed by voters is the potential for tax increases. People are happy where their taxes are, she said, and are not interested in an increase of any kind.
“But, that probably goes without saying,” she said. “Mount Pearl is a wonderful place. We’ve got good infrastructure, and it’s a well-run city. I haven’t heard a lot of complaints.”
Walsh said the job of a councillor is to maintain that level of satisfaction people have with City services, and keep in mind a good plan for Mount Pearl’s future.
When she moved to Mount Pearl years ago, Walsh said, it was a City of young families. Noe the demographic is much older, like many places in the province.
Although she does not know how feasible it would be right now, Walsh said she has a vision for the City that entails infrastructure geared toward seniors.
“We’d have to build up, not out. There’s not as much land as there once was,” she said. “That way, seniors can still live here in Mount Pearl. It’s important to keep our population base. The seniors that I’ve spoken to have expressed interest in that kind of thing, so to have infrastructure like that would benefit everyone. That way, we’ll grow our population. Once the demographic changes, we’re looking at young families in the city once again. This way, we’re not losing seniors and we’re gaining families.”
One of her biggest strengths, Walsh said, is her ability to take people’s concerns and morph them into plausible ideas that can be taken into serious consideration at the council level.
“It’s all about finding solutions, and I’ve been doing that my entire life,” she said.
