Estevan voters have elected one of the most diverse groups of candidates in recent memory to be city councillors for the next four years.
Incumbents Shelly Veroba and Travis Frank will be joined by newcomers Rebecca Foord, Lindsay Clark, Kirsten Walliser and Tony Sernick on council. Roy Ludwig will remain the mayor.
It’s a council with three women – Veroba, Foord and Walliser – and there are three candidates under the age of 35 in Frank, Foord and Walliser.
Unofficial results from Monday night show Veroba finished first with 1,874 votes, followed by Foord (1,613), Frank (1,484), Clark (1,345), Walliser (1,187) and Sernick (1,025).
Other candidates seeking election were Geoff Thiessen (932 votes), Mark Henderson (889), Blaine Chrest (783), Bernadette Wright (717) and Allan Yergens (512).
Veroba came in first for the second straight election. She’s the first incumbent to take top spot in the councillor race since Ludwig did it in 2000.
“I was really excited when I saw I had the most votes, but my biggest thing is just being in the top six, because I really do want to be on council for the next four years, and I know it’s going to be a tough four years, but I’m ready for it,” said Veroba.
She believes that with just two incumbents running for council, there were a lot of people who wanted the experienced councillors on there.
“I think experience is going to be important, because when I first came on council in 2016, I had the other experienced councillors who did help me when I had to phone them and ask them a question,” said Veroba.
Most times those councillors didn’t try to sway her opinion; they were just trying to guide her along.
She would like to see more change among the committees that council members sit on. Veroba has spent the past four years on the same committees, and she hopes there can be more change.
Foord said she received a lot of positive feedback throughout the campaign. People came to her and reached out with questions, and it was nice to talk to people she hadn’t met previously.
“They felt comfortable enough to be able to come to me and approach me,” said Foord.
This isn’t the first time she has been in council chambers. Foord was the student at large for city council in 2008, back when council still had the role. It helped her understand the procedure of a council meeting.
“I think a lot has changed over the years. I believe that the city council has become a lot more transparent, and I would like it to see it become way more transparent, to be more open with the public about things and about what happens in council meetings,” said Foord.
She knows several members of the new council well, but there are others who she’ll interact with for the first time. Foord hopes the council members can get to know each other quickly so they can work in unison.
And she’s excited to see the number of young people on council, and the number of women councillors.
Frank said he is very excited to be back on council for another term. He spent the last four years learning the job and the issues council faces.
“To be able to come back and bring that experience in for another four years and lead a very new group of council is very exciting to me,” said Frank.
He was undecided a few months ago whether he would seek another term on council, so it proved to be a good decision to run again.
Frank said it’s an interesting council. When he was elected in 2016, he believes he was the youngest person to ever have a seat. Now he’s an experienced member on a council with two other people under the age of 35.
Council has some big challenges to start with getting the four new councillors up to speed, and they’ll have to go through the budget process.
Moving forward, council will have to prepare for the shutdown of Units 4 and 5 at the Boundary Dam Power Station, and focus on economic development. He expects they won’t have to dedicate as much time to big projects.
Clark said it was “humbling” to be elected in his first time on the ballot, and no matter what happened, it was going to be a good council.
“There was a diverse group and you could certainly find someone to vote for,” said Clark.
He would like to see council be more transparent and do more work to communicate with the community.
“They always have questions of what council’s doing, and I just think we have to be better at getting the message out,” said Clark. “People aren’t upset at what the last council did. They see the city being run fairly well, but sometimes they want to know what’s going on.”
When decisions are made, they want to hear how the debate went, and tell people why they made tough decisions.
Clark pointed out there will be people spending their winter in Estevan for the first time in years, because snowbirds can’t cross the Canada-U.S. border, so it’s important to have programs for them. And once the community does open up again, it will be important to have events and activities that bring people to the city and help local businesses.
Walliser described the new council as having a new look, and she believes there will be a lot of new ideas and opportunities with the variety of councillors who have been elected.
She anticipated that being part of council could be the biggest learning curve of her life.
“I think we’re going to rely heavily on Councillor Frank and Councillor Veroba for the next few months, and definitely the mayor,” said Walliser.
She has some experience at city hall from when she worked for the city as a summer student. That experience helped her decide whether to run, because she had an understanding of the time commitment of being a councillor and the volume of information she has to know.
Walliser said she would like to see the city share more information. People told her they felt like they had to “go hunting” for information, and they want to know what’s going on.
She would like to see a policy that creates a third-party allocation that benefits everyone, after talking to agencies like the Estevan Family Resource Centre and Limitless Disability Advocacy Services.
Sernick described the evening as “nerve-wracking,” since he was in seventh spot after the advance poll and mail-in ballots, and was barely ahead of Thiessen for sixth after the drive-thru polling station.
“I had no idea going into it … but it was definitely a nail-biter watching the results come in, which made it a lot of fun as well,” said Sernick.
People liked that he wants to bring a voice for the oil and gas sector to council, since council typically hasn’t had someone who is employed in that industry.
“You look at previous councils, and they try to have a diverse amount of people in there and represented, and I would say energy hasn’t been represented, so that’s a major reason why I’m doing it,” said Sernick.
People are concerned about jobs in the energy sector, and they want to see taxes and utilities kept in check.
He’ll approach council like he would when starting a new job, and he’s looking forward to budget deliberations.
“My goal is to listen to learn, and we can learn how to be a councillor,” said Sernick.
