Medicine Hat council candidate Adam Koch has focus of maintaining services

“I’m trying to be a voice that says let’s keep moving forward on some of the more progressive issues and some of the things that will help people that are kind of at the lowest sort of socio-economic part of our ladder.”

The 42-year old is a business owner in the community, opening up Hometown, a restaurant located on North Railway Street South East in November 2024.

He grew up in the city, also spending a short time going to the University of Calgary before living in Toronto for 17 years.

During that time Koch found himself in some leadership and executive chef roles.

Later moving back to Medicine Hat with family already here, and affordability being another factor.

“The cost of living, the ability to buy a house and have a yard and that kind of thing was really attractive,” Koch said.

“I moved back here in 2021 and started putting plans together for the restaurant with my sister.”

He said there are a lot of transferable skills between council and working in the hospitality and service industry.

“Integrity and honesty and putting people first. When you’re a city councillor, the residents of the city are essentially your client, in the same way that anybody that walks in the door of my restaurant is your client,” Koch said.

“So your first priority is taking care of them, listening to them and making sure that they have a good experience,” he added.

“Listening to people’s concerns and just trying to do whatever you can to make people’s lives easier. Essentially, that’s what cities do, provide services.”

Koch said he think that those local connections are really important..

“I’m not a traditional politician but, I am very much looking forward to just hearing people’s concerns and having conversations,” Koch said.

“I’m a person that has strong opinions that are loosely held and I can definitely be convinced to change my mind on things as long as the information that backs that is good,” he added.

“My plan is to just have as many conversations with as many people as possible and just really try to advocate for the future of the city.”

He said he wants to try to be inspiring and try to think about things outside of the box a little bit.

“Not necessarily doing things the way that they’ve always been done,” Koch said.

“There’s plenty of reasons why you keep doing things the same way, because sometimes they’re tried and true. But also the world changes at a rapid pace,” he added.

“It’s important to make sure that we’re not left behind in that scenario.”

Koch said it’s important that we don’t lose sight of what city councillors do and also crucially what they don’t do.

“There seems to be an awful lot of misconceptions about that. You know they don’t have the power to just like unilaterally make your cost of living better,” Koch said.

“I really just want to refocus on this idea that council is essentially a board of directors for the city and we have to let the experts and the professionals that work for the city do their work, a single councillor can’t insert themselves into an issue and solve the problem on their own,” he added.

“That’s just not how it works right. Collaboration and as much information as possible before making a decision are the things that are really important.”

by Jesse Gill

Medicine Hat council candidate Adam Koch has focus of maintaining services

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