Cache Creek Councillor Wendy Coomber

Councillor Wendy Coomber visited in the studio, and chatted with Gareth Smart about her roles on Council. Wendy has been on the Cache Creek Council for four years, over two elections.

She won her first election during a bi-election in 2016, where she ran against our Civic Journalist Gareth Smart (long before he was a journalist with Ashcroft Hub). The Mayor at the time was John Ranta, who had been Mayor for 28 years. At the end of John's tenure there was no senior staff in in the village office including no Chief Administrative Officer and no Chief Financial Officer. Many things at the time were being paid for by the landfill legacy fund, that was providing a certain amount of money a year to the village for having BC's largest landfill. In 2016 the company closed its doors, but there was a pool of money left behind that is referred to the Landfill Legacy Fund. The Previous Mayor and Council would use this money to keep taxes low and pay for things such as the Cache Creek Pool, which was free for everyone to use during the summer.

In 2018 during the normal municipal election she won her seat again, but this time with a fairly new group of Councillors, including a new mayor; Santo Talarico. Quickly she was a part of hiring senior staff to the office which included her husband, who became the Chief Administrative Officer.

Wendy is also heavily involved with several appointed committees on Council including the historic Hat Creek board of directors. She is also a part of several groups just within the Village as a volunteer, this includes communities in bloom and the Cache Creek Market which is open every Saturday morning. Wendy was journalist for forty years, with a interest in politics. She was the editor at the local Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal newspaper for 14 years before she retired in 2015.

Wendy is also heavily involved in Cache Creek's local emergency plan, being in the role of Communications Director during emergencies, the most recent being the flooding that took place in Cache Creek. If the village had the money, her vision for Cache Creek includes tearing down old boarded up building and building new structures; bringing new businesses to the area; and having more industrial companies in the currently empty buildings around Cache Creek.