Photo from Facebook/John Petrie for City Mayor

By Chris Brown

New Brooks mayor wants to improve city’s highway image

Oct 20, 2021 | 4:43 PM

BROOKS, AB – Brooks is among the many communities in Alberta that elected a new mayor this week.

John Petrie defeated fellow councillor Norman Gerestein in Monday’s election. Petrie earned 1,580 votes to 1,162 for Gerestein.

“I’m really excited about it,” Petrie said on Wednesday. “I’ve been a Brooksite for over 40 years and it’s a wonderful community and I had a lot of people that sort of encouraged me to run.”

Petrie said while campaigning two of the most common topics he heard about from seniors were health care and wanting to stay in their own place as long as possible.

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“Something that we could probably work with is transition housing as they come either from the rural area into Brooks or if they have a bigger house in Brooks into a smaller area for seniors,” he said. “Younger people, when I talked to them they said we need faster internet and I know we’re in a process y’know of going through that plan now too.”

Issues Petrie brought forward on the campaign included economic development and per capita funding for arts and culture.

He also wants to take better advantage of the city’s prime location.

“Our inside of the community looks wonderful. But you know as you travel along the Trans-Canada by Brooks there we have some work to do to change the perception of the community,” he said. “And if there’s ways we can kind of do that you know it changes the image of the community. I would say there’s about three million vehicles that go by Brooks every year.”

He added that the JBS Foods plant provides a substantial economic boost but the city needs to look at other industries to reduce reliance on JBS.

Petrie served only served this past term on council but has been heavily involved in the community long before that as everything from Brooks Rotary president to Meals on Wheels volunteer.

The previous mayor, Barry Morishita, made the move to provincial politics this summer instead of running for re-election. He is now the leader of the Alberta Party of being acclaimed at the end of August.

Elected Councillors

Joining the new mayor around the council table will be John Nesbitt (1,367 votes), Joel Goodnough (1,336), Marissa Wardrop (1,213), Mohammed Idriss (1,150), Bill Prentice (1,146) and Ray Juska (1,117) were elected to council. Jim Third finished close behind with 1,113 votes.