Mayor Sandy Bowman announces plans to run for second term as mayor

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Mayor Sandy Bowman is running for a second term as mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) in next year’s municipal election. Bowman is about to finish his first term as mayor and is the first person to announce publicly plans to be on the ballot next October.

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Bowman said in an interview he is happy with what council has accomplished during the past three years, but there are still plenty of projects and ideas he hopes to oversee with a second mayoral term.

“Two of the questions I’ve been getting a lot is if I’m running again and if I could please run again,” he said. “There’s a lot of things I want to get done.”

Some of these long-term projects include finishing flood mitigation construction, developing downtown and the waterfront, fighting for an aging in place facility, and bringing gas and electric fees in line with what people pay in other Alberta cities.

A major victory for Bowman since he was elected to council in 2021 has been the return of a local EMS dispatch service to Fort McMurray. This ends a dispute that began when the province announced in 2020 that EMS dispatch would be run from centralized hubs in Edmonton, Calgary and Peace River.

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Bowman agrees with recent comments from Premier Danielle Smith that the RMWB and province should develop incentives for transient workers to live in Fort McMurray. Brian Jean, Alberta’s energy minister and Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche UCP MLA, has long called oilsands commuter camps harmful to Fort McMurray.

He is excited for the Natural Resource Extraction Support Project Tax Incentive Bylaw, which council unanimously approved last May. The program offers up to 10 years of low municipal taxes for new industries in the natural resources sector. Eligible companies and projects must not have a commute of more than an hour from Fort McMurray. Work camps are not eligible for the program.

“We’re hitting this issue from an incentive angle rather than a punishment angle,” said Bowman.

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While there is still work to do on developing downtown, Bowman said the area is busier economically and culturally than it has been in recent years.

He’s proud council has supported the creation of a business advisory committee, restarting construction on the Northside Twin Arenas, improved off-highway vehicle (OHV) staging areas and the start of the OHV pilot program in Abasand. He is also proud of scrapping photo radar and getting repairs finished to the Hospital Street bridge.

“There’s a lot of things I still want to get done,” said Bowman. “There’s also a lot of positive things going on.

The next municipal election is scheduled for Oct. 20, 2025.

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vmcdermott@postmedia.com

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