Dear Editor,
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a local barbershop talking politics when the topic of the population cap came up. The gentleman I was talking to said he had been a resident for over 70 years and he thought that new residents like me (resident for over 10 years and my wife for over 32 years) don’t know much about Okotoks and that our opinions about Okotoks shouldn’t count. I politely asked if he thought that some people’s votes in our town should count for more than others. Since then I have given this point a little more thought. I lived the first 20 years of my life in Brandon, Manitoba with a population around 30,000. When I came to Okotoks in 2001, the population was 11,000 and now it is over 24,000. For most of Okotoks’ history, the town has had a population of a few thousand or less. What does the current Okotoks have in common with a small town of two or three thousand? As nice as Okotoks was “back then”, we aren’t going to remove any houses or bulldoze any new businesses. I think all the people who have invested in living in Okotoks have and should have, an equal say in our collective future, in our “not so small” town.
David Clark
Okotoks
