After three years as an alderman and almost nine years as Mayor of Carlyle, Don Shirley stepped down from his civic duties in August.
"It's a huge responsibility that takes up a lot of time, but it's also a great privilege to represent the people of Carlyle," says Shirley. "I have enjoyed it. I just got too busy."
Shirley has served the town since 2003. An alderman from 2003-2006 and mayor from November 2006 until August 2014, Shirley says that prior to serving on council, he had long had an interest in civic politics. "Before I started, I used to go and watch the council meetings. No one does that," he says smiling. "I used to come to council meetings and just sit in and listen."
In spite of his desire to serve, Shirley said he wasn't worried about the possibility of not winning his first election as alderman. "I wasn't worried, but I don't mean that in an arrogant way. My feeling was that if I didn't get in, people made a choice and that was the way things were supposed to go."
As mayor, Shirley says that he wanted to serve all citizens equally. "The mayor has no power per se. You just run the meetings. In fact you probably have less power than the others, because you're there to run a meeting and you can't push your own agenda. As mayor, I couldn't go out and decide something on my own. "
"The councillors have been really good. They work together and all of them have the best interests of the town at heart."
"In the end, the way council went was usually the right way. The way the process is set up, you're getting a pretty good cross-section of people representing all of the citizens of Carlyle. I didn't worry about getting out-voted or whatever. I liked to go around the table and get every councillor's views. Newer councillors could sometimes be slower to speak up if they were just starting. But I always felt it was important to get everyone's views, because we're all equally elected by the people of Carlyle."
Shirley says that being the public face of the town, like any other job, has its ups and downs. "As mayor, you are representing the community. It's a real privilege to be able to attend important events in people's lives, such as graduations and anniversaries. That was one of my favourite things. One of my least favourite things was making speeches, but that's part of the job."
"I also got to learn a lot when [Premier] Brad Wall came out here in 2011 after the flooding. He met with us and the R.M. and explained how things worked with provincial money. Meeting Olympic athlete Clara Hughes when she cycled through town as part of her 'Bell Let's Talk' campaign was also something I got to do as mayor. However, to me, my most important public duty was laying the Remembrance Day wreath on behalf of the town."
Shortly after becoming mayor, Shirley says he and council set out to tackle the top concerns of Carlyle's citizens. "A poll revealed that the top two issues were water and garbage. We set out a five-year and a 10-year plan and we set our sights on tackling those and other things. We've now got good water and we've improved the method of garbage collection."
"Other concerns were daycare, community binders like the Dickens Festival, and health care. We'd measure how far we'd come and there are some huge challenges left, but we're working on them."
"Looking ahead, we've annexed in the R.M., a half-mile west and a half-mile south within the town limits, so we've got room for future growth."
"Whatever the issue, we always talked to our neighbours---White Bear, the R.M., and other communities in the area. I'm proud of that and I think that's the way forward. The growth in this area has led to some new people joining our community and I think that diversity is great."
"There's so much potential here," says Shirley, "but I would like Carlyle to remain a good place to raise a family, to retire in, and to remain a place where all of our citizens can enjoy a good quality of life."
