An interview with Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Roden

Gareth Smart sits down with Mayor of Ashcroft Barbara Roden. The HUB Online Network has interviewed Barbara before, but this is the first time as Mayor.

Roden was elected in 2014 as a village councilor. At that time she had lived in Ashcroft for 23 years, and her son is the last person that born in the Ashcoft Health Site. Roden felt that running for council would let her give back to the village that she loved in another way.

In her opinion the difference between councilor and Mayor is “the amount of involvement you have and the number of meetings, as mayor there are a lot of those, and despite COVID-19 that number hasn’t really slowed.” “There are now also many more meetings due to Covid 19.” Several of the meetings that the Mayor is involved in are in Kamloops about an hour away from Ashcroft which constitutes a lot of driving, but it is worth it.

Mayor Roden clarifies that she does not have a super vote, there are four councilors and one mayor, no one has a bigger or more important vote than anyone else. She does not break voting ties, everyone votes at he same time.

Roden says that her biggest challenge in politics (other than COVID-19) is defiantly the 2017 wildfire. It was a scary time that no one in this area had ever lived through, and she hopes that it never happens again.

A success in her political career is the new water treatment plant that had recently been completed. What happened here is that the provincial government passed legislation saying that all municipalities had to move to a tier two water system. In order to do this the village had to go to the public and with the citizens approval the village went after a multi million-dollar loan to build this new system. Once the project was done, instead of borrowing four million dollars, the village only ended up borrowing 1.2 million.

One of the things that Mayor Roden wanted to see when she became a councilor was to see not community engagement, but help community organizations that promote community engagement.

When asked about what new business types we should have to help bring in new tourists, she said that “we need to improve our arts and artist culture, we need small boutiques and not big box chains, a dog park would do wonders for our town, and mainly accommodations.”

The village forms by-laws but has no by-law officer. “There are other people that can enforce by-laws and we put a by-law in place so that everyone knows the expectation," she explained. "First it is complaint driven, if someone has a complaint it will be followed up. Nine time out of ten education is the approach we take, it usually comes down to people just not knowing that there is a by-law.”

The Mayor was in a position to share some breaking news with us. The village of Ashcroft during COVID-19 is going to suspend the 2.5 % tax increase for this year, to try and help the people of Ashcroft during this unprecedented time.

Barbara Roden is available by phone or email for the citizens of Ashcroft.We thanked her for her time, and look forward to future interviews with her.