Mayor Al McDonald looks back on 2017 and ahead to 2018

Within six months we’ll know if Mayor Al McDonald will be running in the 2018 municipal election.

In his year end interview, he says he’ll talk with family and come up with a decision.

“Do you commit to another four years or do you go on and do other things, obviously I’m a business man by trade and I see a lot of business opportunities out there,” he says. “But I think you’re going to see, sometime before June, I’ll make an announcement either way.”

McDonald has been the mayor for seven years now and says it has been an honour.

He also says there have been many successes in 2017.

“I think our building numbers of over $83-million is the most in seven years, if you look at the Community Energy Park, if you look at the Film Industry here in our community, there was many, many successes that we had,” he says.

But there were challenges, too.

“When you look at Porter leaving, because there wasn’t enough support for them, or if you look at the challenges we had around the Dionne Quints Museum, that’s all part of it,” he says.

Despite the upcoming election, there’s still work to do in 2018.

“Continuing to grow our city, economic development, job creation. If I was to say there was a number one, I would say job creation, even though our unemployment rate is low, lower than the province,” McDonald says.

He also says the city’s doing extremely well financially with debt going down and reserves up to $64-million.