The voters of Estevan have given Trevor Knibbs a strong mandate to fill the vacant seat on city council.
Knibbs was the runaway winner in last Wednesday's byelection, earning 686 votes. The owner of Power Dodge, Knibbs said he was both surprised and excited by the support he received.
"I didn't think it would be quite that big of a margin," Knibbs said during a media scrum shortly after he was declared the winner. "I'm really excited to serve the city of Estevan."
A total of five candidates put their name forward to fill the seat vacated by former councillor Chris Istace. But it was Knibbs who launched the most aggressive campaign with a barrage of advertisements throughout the city and in local media outlets.
He acknowledged the approach "didn't do any harm" and the numbers support that, as he captured almost 40 per cent of the votes cast.
Marge Young placed second with 391 votes while Stewart Miller received 345. Former councillor Lynn Chipley placed a surprising fourth with 330 votes and Mohammed Waseem was fifth with 81 votes.
Knibbs was thrown to the fire almost immediately as he was officially sworn in during Monday night's regular meeting of council. The married father of two sons said his first order of business is to learn the proper council procedures.
"First of all, I need to see what's all entailed," he said. "That's the biggest thing, getting my feet wet and knowing what we can do and what we can't do.
"It's easy to be a perfect critic from the outside, which I guess I have been for a lot of years. Since (being on council) is something I have never done, it's definitely going to be a learning curve, but I'll catch to it very quickly."
A total of 1,837 people voted in the byelection, which is just under 20 per cent of the population. City officials said they were pleased with the total as byelections are typically plagued by low voter turnout.
The byelection was also the first time that an automated voting system was used by the City. According to comments made following the election, there were no issues with the system, which was loaned to them by the City of Regina. The system also helped expedite the vote counting process as results were available just minutes after the polls closed. In the 2012 election it was well past midnight before the final results were known.
