After retiring from the small business he owned for 30 years, Mayor of Innisfail Brian Spiller decided to try his hand at politics, first as a councilman, and after only three years of that, was elected mayor.

Now Spiller is back on the ballot this fall, looking to turn his tenure as mayor from 4 to 8 years.  

Spiller says Innisfail is one of a few towns in Central Alberta with zero debt.

They actually boast a 16 million dollar surplus in reserves, something he says is easy to maintain and plan for, thanks to the small amount of growth his town experiences every year.  

“We’re maintaining what got handed to us when I got on council 7 years ago. We had a 10 million dollar surplus and no debt and we’ve continued to do that, and we’ve increased our surpluses up to around 16 million in reserves that we have.”

Spiller says one of the contributing factors to Innisfail having zero debt, is the fact that they have a low growth rate, which makes it easy to plan for future projects.

“Actually we have 1% to 2% growth per year, which makes it very easy to plan for the future, because there is no big 15% to 20% growth like some of the neighbouring communities in Central Alberta have. We’d like to have their growth but ours is much easier to plan.”

An arena expansion, and a 9 million dollar sewer plant and lagoon reclamation project are two of the things Spiller is proud of during his tenure as mayor, and he hopes to have the chance to continue his work.