Oliver hopes to lead R.M. of North Cypress-Langford
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- Published on Friday, October 17, 2014
By Eoin Devereux
The Neepawa Banner
To merely say that Ralph Oliver is familiar with the goings on in the R.M. of North Cypress would probably be a remarkable understatement. The man, who was born and raised in the region, has served in some capacity for at least 28 years.
He’s been on the R.M. council for 12 years, serving as Reeve for the past four. Prior to council, Oliver served on the Beautiful Plains School Division board as a trustee and before that on the local hospital board.
Oliver said all that experience has provided him with a pretty good idea of what’s important.
“I’ve been born and raised in the R.M. of North Cypress and it’s home to me,” said Oliver. “I have a pretty good feel for what the issues are and what people consider to be important, as well as the costs of operating and how you try to manage all of those things.”
Oliver noted that over the last four years, the council in the R.M. of North Cypress has worked hard to ensure the costs to ratepayers have been kept in check.
“I think that they’ve seen a pretty organized and well run council with a good emphasis on the cost of operations. It’s important to try and find efficiencies in the work that the municipal council does and the services that it delivers to the public,” said Oliver. “One thing that we’ve done is that we’ve taken ownership of the hauling and managing of our recycling and garbage. We partnered with the Town of Carberry on that, and it’s worked out very well for us. It’s provided us with good service and has resulted in the cost of operations being lower than it was before. It’s created local employment as well, which is good for us.”
With the emphasis now shifting towards the new and expanded R.M. of North Cypress-Langford, Oliver said the first year of council will be challenging but is also something he’s ready to meet head on.
“First and foremost, we have to ensure that we are fully integrated and that everyone feels quite comfortable in the new municipality. That would be a priority. We need to make sure that our administrative services are in place and well organized so that we can provide financial services that people expect out of the office. And to make sure that we’ve got our fully integrated accounting system as well. It’s going to require, certainly a couple of years to achieve that, but we’ve gone a long way towards that already. We worked closely with [the R.M. of] Langford for the past year to do that.” stressed Oliver. “It’s a challenging job. It can be a rewarding job.
