It was an election of mixed messages from the electorate Monday night as Minto residents went to the polls and brought in almost a whole new council from the top down.
Only incumbent councillors Rick Hembly and Dave Turton will be returning, with the remainder being new faces to the council chambers.
Gone are Mayor David Anderson, deputy-mayor Judy Dirksen and councillor Wayne Martin. Barb Burrows and Tammy Reiner chose not to run for this term of council.
While the municipality enjoyed a mail-in voter turnout remarkable for most municipalities, the 56.5% results were up only 2.5% from the 2006 Minto election.
George Bridge was elected as mayor this term, beating incumbent David Anderson with a 16% margin.
In the deputy-mayor’s job, the margin was much closer, with Terrance Fisk defeating incumbent Judy Dirksen by 5%.
In an election night interview, Bridge said the priorities for the coming term include reorganization.
“I know they’ve started down that path. We need to look at what the new structure is going to be,” he said.
He added staffing is one of the key issues that needs to be addressed. Bridge said the new team “will need to sit down and do the transition, which is very important.”
There will also be a need to look at the township’s financial information.
Although Bridge has had initial talks with Treasurer Gord Duff, “until you get in there, you really don’t know what the situation is.”
Bridge saw the overall campaign as going very well.
“What excited me was the energy that was out there, among all the candidates.” He cited three candidate meetings and one at a local school among grade 5 students.
“It’s amazing. They had good questions and they had their mock elections,” he said. But that’s what it’s all about, he added – getting out there.
“Myself and quite a few candidates got out there, door to door. Then you get the issues and find out what’s really out there and what their concerns are.”
He also considered “the results of the mail-in vote a great thing. It tells you people are interested.”
As the results started to come in, the percentages of mayoral votes were an indicator of the final tally.
Of those gathered for the results of the Minto election, only Dirksen was there representing the incumbent councillors.
In a Tuesday morning telephone interview, Anderson said the election turnouts in Minto were no different than the trend across Ontario.
“A lot of incumbent politicians were defeated; obviously people want change, and that is what happened last evening.”
Anderson added that he believes the past council had set a game plan in place in certain areas and hoped that the new council would follow those plans to move forward.
He added that he has already set a meeting with Bridge.
“There’s a number of issues [the new councillors] are not aware of.”
