Cecil Villard 3rd candidate running for Charlottetown mayor
Villard joins Al Douglas and Jamie Larkin vying for the position
Former city councillor Cecil Villard is again running for a spot with the city — but this time he wants to be in the mayor's chair.
Villard served on council for 11 years and was a senior bureaucrat with Health PEI. Drawing on his previous experience as a city councillor and with the health-care system, he figured it was an apt time to return to municipal politics.
"When I was elected to council for the first time I thought, after I was in there for a while … that I'd run for mayor," he said.
- Al Douglas is running for mayor of Charlottetown in 2018
- Jamie Larkin enters race for Charlottetown mayor
"The time seems to be right, right now."
Now that he's retired Villard said he has the time to take the role as the city's mayor and that he'd be a proper fit for the job as he'd spent most of his career in senior leadership roles with Health PEI.
"I'm comfortable managing relationships which, in the role of mayor, is basically what you're doing — you're managing the relationships of 10 councillors and, through that process, trying to move an agenda forward."
'Tremendous opportunities here'
One thing Villard said he'd like to see is the city make greater use of data and information technology to make decisions.
"If we did that you'd have the opportunity to use the data that you can generate through IT for infrastructure planning, for measuring the quality of life in the city, for economic development — it's a multi-use purpose tool."
"There's tremendous opportunities here in this great city and I think we need to embrace technology and use it to make better decisions that will benefit our citizens."
Villard joins Al Douglas and Jamie Larkin vying for the position.
The province's municipal elections take place on Nov. 5.
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With files from Sara Fraser