Following a back and forth campaign, Ed Rondeau was re-elected as reeve for the MD of Bonnyville on Oct. 21, defeating challenger Erwin Thompson by over 600 votes.
Rondeau, who will enter his third term as reeve, received 1,306 votes, while Thompson pulled in 664 votes.
“It feels great to have been re-elected as Reeve. It is a nice feeling to know the people supported you,” said Rondeau, who wasn't surprised by the margin of victory over Thompson.
“Yes, I was hoping for a fairly substantial margin. It gives you confidence that the people have faith in you and that they feel you are doing a proper job.”
The MD of Bonnyville council was nearly left unchanged, as first-time councillor Dana Swigart, of Ward 5, will be the only new face on council over next four years. Swigart, elected by acclaimation, will be replacing outgoing councillor Glen Johnson who retired at the end of this past term.
Councillors Don Sinclair, David Fox and Fred Bamber were all re-elected in their respective wards by large margins, while councillors Mike Krywiak, and Barry Kalinski were acclaimed.
Rondeau feels it will be a lot easier to move forward with business in a timely fashion with only one new councillor coming into the fold.
“It will be a lot easier than if you had three new councillors because then you would have to go through a lot more details,” said Rondeau. “Here you just have to go through one ward that may need to be helped along. Most of the councillors have a pretty good idea as to what needs to be done. We will just have to bring (Swigart) up to speed. We will help him out.”
According to Rondeau the biggest business the MD council will be addressing over the next few months will be the budget. Like many other important decisions, council discussed the budget leading up to the election but left most of the decision-making for the new council. Now that council has been elected, the councillors will start having to make those decisions.
“The most important thing at this time of the year is the budget. We only have a couple months left to get our budget in order. So we are going to concentrate on that,” said Rondeau, who plans to have a budget specific meeting with the rest of the councillors in early November.
“As the previous council, we did some preliminary budget work but we left it so that the next council would have a lot of input. So, as far as infrastructure, we haven't really identified it but we have identified that we need to spend a fair amount of money on infrastructure.”
Regional cooperation was scrutinized over the course of election campaigns as many ratepayers were calling for better cooperation between the MD, the Town of Bonnyville and the City of Cold Lake. Rondeau says it is something that the MD will address in the future.
“We have got a good relationship with the Town of Bonnyville and look forward to continuing that,” said Rondeau. “We have a good relationship with Cold Lake but it needs to be finessed a little bit more. There is more work that needs to be done with Cold Lake, for instance we don't have a recreational agreement as far as the Energy Centre and their recreation and we have one with Bonnyville.”
Rondeau plans to contact Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland in the future to continue to improve their relationship moving forward.
