NIPIGON – James Foulds has been a councillor for the Township of Nipigon for 16 years, and he hopes to bring that experience to the mayor's seat after this year’s municipal election.
“I thought I'd take the jump to going to mayor and to use my experience that I gained over the years, to keep moving Nipigon forward in a cost-effective way,” he said. “There's a lot of things we're doing right now that have my interest and I'd like to continue on with those.”
Foulds says he's more focused on completing those current initiatives than making big changes, should he be elected.
“We have a lot of things going on right now with the national green conservation down on the waterfront where they're going to be building a new building... supposedly it was going to be this year," he said..
“I'd like to work with Parks Canada on that development and the development of our waterfront to keep that going. We always have infrastructure improvements to be made every year, and we have a short summer season, so we have to be on top of that all the time.”
Foulds says he would also like to keep working on an extension for the hospital that could potentially see a 30-bed long term care facility, saying senior housing is one of his top priorities
Nipigon has a large population of seniors due to the closure of the mills in Nipigon and Red Rock forcing young people to look for work elsewhere, Foulds said.
While he believes younger people are starting to return to Nipigon, he said seniors right now are looking for any assistance they can get.
“If they have problems with their house or maintaining housing and trying to find contractors, I’m out there trying to find people that can go into these locations,” he said.
“For senior housing, we converted our old Saint Ed’s School that laid dormant for years. We finally got some funding to do a restoration and we put seven senior apartments in that location which filled up right away. So, we'd like to continue with that. That [was] just phase one, but we'd like to continue to phase two and phase three of that particular project.”
Foulds says that the people of Nipigon should vote for him because most of the community already knows him and his dedication to Nipigon through 16 years on council, and many years of experience as a hospital board member, Local 528 president, and president of the curling club.
“I have a lot of experience dealing with people and getting things done at the end of the day. So I think most people know me for that,” he said.
“I'll continue on with the same determination I've always had, but I want to do it where things are attainable and we can do them in a cost-effective way because we don't have big budgets in small communities. Every dollar we spend, we have to make sure that we account for that dollar.”
