WESTLOCK – After moving to Westlock five years ago and starting up his own mechanic business with his brother, Chad Cloutier has set sights on one of the six available seats on the Town of Westlock council in the Oct. 18 municipal election.
Cloutier wants to enhance Westlock’s economic development for both new and existing businesses, understanding the struggles that they face.
“I want to help out with the development of local businesses and the development of businesses” said Cloutier. “I know it’s really hard doing it and you have to put in some pretty big hours to get one going. I’d like to help out new businesses coming to Westlock and working with those that are already here.”
After working through the process of starting his own business, Torx Mechanical and Lube, Cloutier understands the difficulty of starting a business and the cooperation that is required by council to get one started.
“When we were first developing our business, it was really hard to get the town to work with us on development so I would like to smooth that out a bit and it might make people want to come here.”
A confusing and difficult system could cause the town to lose business to other locations if not addressed, Cloutier notes.
“I know some businesses could find it too difficult to set up here so they end up going to somewhere else like Barrhead, which isn’t helping us at all. We need to help out the little guys.”
While inexperienced in municipal politics, he says his business experience will help create a voice for small business owners in town.
“I’m new to the politics world but I think that my business experience will be an asset there.”
Cloutier is one of eight candidates and will face Laura Morie, Abby Keyes, Jon Kramer and Brenda Lussier as well as incumbents Curtis Snell, Murtaza Jamaly, and Randy Wold.
