PORT HARDY—This town’s incumbent mayor said she will vie for another term in the upcoming November elections.
“I am indeed running for a second term.” she told the Gazette last week.
Parnham said another term will help her realize her vision of seeing the town move ahead.
“I think we have an incredible amount of potential on the North Island, in Port Hardy, and I think it’s time for us to explore all those options,” she said.
“I believe in making things happen rather than waiting for things to happen.”
Parnham is a former Port Hardy councilor who served six years in the late 1980s/early 1990s.
“I took a break, then ran for councillor in 2005, then ran for mayor in 2008,” she said.
Parnham said she’s proud of what council has achieved while she’s been at the helm.
“With a good council behind me, we’ve made a lot of headway making Port Hardy a better place to live and a better place to invest,” she said.
“We’ve tried to, and really succeeded in putting Port Hardy back on the provincial radar which we really needed to do.”
The mayor said council developed a comprehensive, strategic plan for economic development, “and with that we received a new agreement with the province, the Communities First Agreement.”
“That’s given us town officials the opportunity to meet with investors from Asia, Europe and the U.S. to tell them about Port Hardy and try to open the doors to investment.
“There’s lots of interest in things we do have to offer — our mines, our forests and our fisheries are our wealth,” said Parnham.
“There’s a lot of interest in new energy generation and aquaculture and I think we’ve made headway there.”
The mayor said she believed in the past the town just wasn’t as attractive as it could have been to businesspeople with deep pockets.
“We didn’t have that profile out there saying to investors, ‘This is what we have and we’re open for business.’
“Economic development is always at the head and it will be a continuation of what we’ve started.”
Parnham already has at least one competitor for her job; former Mayor Russ Hellberg announced a couple of weeks ago he planned to campaign for his old job.