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Meet your council candidates

Vanderhoof residents will have eight councilor candidates to choose from in this months municipal election - including Peet Vahi ...
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Peet Vahi

“Stop complaining and do something about it!”

Those are the words of Peet Vahi’s wife that spurned him on to consider running for a position on council.

Although he has considered running before he didn’t think he had enough free time to make the full commitment.

“I’ve always had a lot of opinions about issues in our area and now I feel I have enough time on my hands to make a commitment to being on council,” said Vahi.

As a father of two young kids, aged 10 and nine, and also with an 88-year-old mother in town, Vahi says he has a broad outlook on the community.

“I’m exposed to a pretty good, broad spectrum of wants and wishes,” he said.

He added that one of his key goals if he is elected is to find a level ground between increasing taxes and decreasing services in town.

“We’ve got two things that are going to happen here in Vanderhoof - taxes are going to go up, or services are going to go down.

“I just want to see if I can bring that variable into play of looking for efficiencies - see if we can dampen either end of those two things that are going to happen,” he said.

He added that he is in support of building a pool in Vanderhoof.

Vahi moved to Vanderhoof from Ontario 30 years ago after a road trip turned into a new life.

“We took a road trip here to visit some friends and the community just kind of stuck with us, so we stayed,” said Vahi.

As a self-employed consultant, Vahi works primarily on forestry contracts but says he has now expanded into mining contracts.

“So I am getting a fairly good understanding of the mining side of things which is really going to impact us here,” he said.

Vahi has a technical diploma in forestry from a college in Ontario, a Bachelor of Science degree in natural resources and a forestry major from UNBC.

If elected, Vahi says he will make sure he is always there and available for the community and the residents.

 

“I’ll make the commitment to be there ... I’ve always been the guy that goes to the meetings - but this will formalize it somewhat,” he said.