Harish Ratra is a Red Deer city council candidate.
I and my family love Red Deer, living here for more than a decade with my wife and two kids. I came to Canada 23 years ago, for the first seven years I worked as an assembler in a factory and for a year, I studied business accounting in London, Ont. For the last 14 years, I have worked as an accountant/warehouse manager in the oil field industry. My role involved budget development, resource optimization, monitoring of fiscal operations, compliance with local and industry-specific policies/ procedures.
I have a university degree in business, and I believe my accounting and business management skills will serve Red Deerians in balancing the budget with providing better services and lower the tax burden. I love sports; I was the best athlete during my university days, and volunteer at kid’s games.
When I am not working, I am involved with kids and their activities. I love to take walks around the city with my wife and interact with fellow residents. I am actively involved in volunteering, by providing professional services at local nonprofit organizations. Being an active community member, I want to create stronger communities and a stronger Red Deer by being the voice of our people.
Vision for Red Deer:
Make Red Deer great again
I have decided to run for the city council with the vision to make Red Deer great again as a progressive healthy and crime-free city where residents would love to work, raise families, and build a healthy community.
- Local businesses are the key to strong city
- Public safety where all residents feel safe and community thrive
- Access to housing and safe support services for our community’s homeless population
- Convenient and affordable kids recreation/sports activities
- Ensuring transparency and accountability in decision-making
Platform:
Economic growth
I believe strong economy is the key for a strong and healthy community in and around Red Deer. As oil field industry has frequent ups and downs, Red Deer needs to diversify into new trades like supply chain and technology. Red Deer is centrally located based on the population map of Alberta and would have the advantage of economically controlling the distribution channel in Alberta from Red Deer. This fact can be presented to companies to bring more business.
Getting more businesses on the economic platform of Red Deer would help generate employment opportunities for the city residents and have a positive impact on other commercial sectors of Red Deer’s small and medium businesses.
Crime reduction
The data portray a very high crime rate for the City of Red Deer which portray a not so encouraging image of the city. Controlling the crime rate is a task which should be taken up on a priority. Given a chance, I will be voicing this concern.
Kids and youth empowerment
With excessive reliance on technology, the kids are spending a lot of on-screen time. I want to advocate this concern by promoting more youth and kids programs focusing on the physical and mental wellbeing, like promoting yoga and meditation.