Cochrane Mayor Jeff Genung sat down with The Eagle recently to reflect on some of the more personal aspects of the year that was 2023. Here’s that conversation.
Eagle: Looking back on last year’s conversation, it seems this year you again had to deal with some social media strife. One example was when the Town was under a State of Local Emergency and water rationing, some businesses voluntarily closed for a couple of days, you faced some grief from critics saying you should have closed your coffee shop. But you didn’t.
Genung: Yeah. There’s been a bit of that this year, the negative undertow, the social discourse. I don’t know if I’ve become immune to it, or numb, maybe’s a better word. There’s just so much.
The thing I like about what’s happened to social media, at least from my perspective, is I think people are on to it now. The people that are there and are abusing it are going to continue to do that. For me, the wastewater incident in October was kind of a galvanizing moment. There were a lot of people who started to stand up to some of the (negative) things people were saying.
On the personal side, this year has been a pretty big change for my wife and me. Our daughter Avery moved out in September; she finished five years in university and had to move to Calgary, couldn’t find a place in Cochrane. So one leaves the nest, then our son Grayson decided to move to Australia.
So the day he was to leave, my family’s having dinner in Canmore, it was to be our last dinner together before he left, and my phone’s blowing up – it was Oct. 21, the night of the water break.
So I was on the phone to (Calgary) Mayor Gondek at 11 pm and at the RancheHouse til 1 am. And it was a pretty emotional time for my family too.
And then a week of piling on from the community, but also navigating the wastewater incident, signing off on the state of emergency, so it was a tough week, but it was also eerily refreshing in a way, to be just dealing with municipal stuff.
Eagle: It was a chance for the Town to see how their Administration and Council would react in a crisis situation, you mean?
Genung: I just had the wiring – ‘OK, stay calm, deliver the message, we got this.’ I think it’s what we needed. People were panicking, overreacting – no one was ever out of water. Sixteen homes were impacted but I thought we handled that was excellent. It proved that we have the organization that we’ve been building, that people criticize, that they don’t really see, that they don’t really understand the value in it.
That was a great example that we have a kick-ass team here that’s prepared for this stuff.
I had an outpouring of positive emails – which is a rare thing – thanking us for how we handled it.
Eagle: Have you been following international news, and the growing number of political figures relying on aggressive, extremely negative campaigning strategies, and the success they’re having? Does that trend concern you as it seems to be spreading to Canada, Alberta, Cochrane?
Genung: In my speech (to council) Sep. 25, that was my point. It’s easy to be against something. It’s easy to find the negative, and you’ll find it if you look for it. And no one’s perfect – this organization, every person in this community.
But, if you flip that and start looking for the good, there’s a lot. Way more than the negative – way more.
This is the best community in the world to live in, we have so much going on here. It’s no secret, we all know why – the landscape, the beauty, the opportunities, clear blue sky . . . I don’t take time to smell the flowers – I’m trying to be better at that.
(At this point Genung takes his phone out to show a picture of the sunset he took two days earlier.)
Eagle: You’re a pretty savvy politician. From time to time you must at least be tempted to try out some of those slightly more aggressive tactics I was referring to earlier, at least when you’re being criticized for something you feel is incorrect or unfair. I’m talking about showing a bit more emotion.
Genung: You mean say the things you’re thinking? (He laughs here). It’s an interesting point you make. My whole life, I don’t like confrontation.
I’ve always considered myself a long-term resident of Cochrane who cares about building a community –that sounds so cliché but it’s true. It’s my home and I just want to see it remain as special as it’s always been for me.
Another cliché says to do something that scares you every day – this job scares me every day.
Eagle: There’s a tension on council, as we saw in the deliberations on the budget. Is that a concern?
Genung: Hey, it’s a democracy. Bring forward anything you feel is important to our community. Personally, I think some of the things they’re focusing on are not the things Cochrane needs us to focus on. We need to focus on infrastructure. I’ve heard loud and clear from the community: ‘Do not let your foot off the gas on the infrastructure stuff.’
There are so many things that need our attention. I’ve reminded council a few times, that if we were all to leave Cochrane in a bus accident Administration is well equipped to fill potholes, keep the lights on, all those things – they don’t need a council for that. Council should have our heads up and looking to the future, getting ahead of some of these things.
Eagle: One of the things that was referenced in the Municipal Affairs Minister’s rationale for firing half the council and the CAOs in Chestermere recently was that the separation of duties between administration and council got blurred. Where is that line?
Genung: There’s a clear boundary between administration and elected officials. We have one employee, the CAO, who’s in charge of the personnel that operate this community. Some councillors – some community members – believe that council should be in there directing. That’s not our job. It causes problems.
Eagle: What are your priorities in terms of a growth strategy?
Genung: The growth thing’s a hard one. People are saying ‘You’re running out of water because we’re growing too fast. We can’t get across town because we’re growing too fast. The price of housing is too high because we’re growing too fast.’
We, at council, have introduced one new community in our term since 2017, Greystone. That’s the only community we’ve approved, and that was an infill community that was a former gravel pit and made sense. It will have a large commercial and industrial component, so it wasn’t all residential. So it’s the most cost-effective growth we could approve.
Southbow, all of the phases of Sunset, pre-approved before 2017, all the Heartland, Heritage Hills, all pre-approved.
So we have inherited a growth issue. Growing is positive – people want to be here, for good reason, We have good problems. We just need to get a handle on them.
Slowing that down is nearly impossible, We can’t go back and change land use on someone. It’s not possible. So the growth is coming, we just have to be deliberate.
Eagle: Quite a year for you.
Genung: (after a pause Genung mentioned the high point of the Garmin expansion, and the low point of the protesters who threatened his family at the RancheHouse).
Yeah. It was a year.
