The Town of Irricana’s political environment is anything but uneventful, as was proven on Oct. 21, when residents elected five brand new town councillors.
Representing the Town for the next four years will be: Kim Schmaltz who collected the most votes with 241; Dennis Tracz earned 194 votes; Lora Peterson earned a seat with 166 votes, Valerie Squires took the fourth seat with 164 and Laura Thiessen rounded out the fifth seat with 158 votes.
A total of 1,688 votes were collected at the Town office on Oct. 21, according to Irricana CAO Alvin Melton.
“Irricana has 1,162 people, of those there are 890 that are eligible to vote,” Melton explained. “The 890 have an ability to vote for up to five different councillors. So each person can have up to five votes. Therefore, we could have 4,450 total votes.”
Rounding out the bottom of the pool were: Former deputy mayor Larry Martin, who narrowly missed out on a seat with 134 votes; Bradley Hallman with 127 votes; former mayor Lisa Constantini, who earned 120 votes; former councillor Joshua Taylor earned 113 votes; newcomer and firefighter Thomas Blasetti came out with 104 votes, former councillor Peter Dunn came in second to last with 84 votes and Teresa O’Donnell came in last place with 83 votes.
“I was kind of disappointed that I never got a chance to speak in front of the town,”` Dunn told Rocky View Weekly after the results were announced.
“We were promised a forum and then the Town backed out because of political reasons, I was disappointed that I didn’t have a chance in front of the people.”
The Town broke convention and hosted an informal event on Oct. 10 where candidates had booths set up in the community hall, and residents were encouraged to speak with the candidates they wanted to. A traditional debate did not take place before the election day.
Dunn was hesitant when asked if he felt the new council would be effective.
“I’ll be honest I don’t think they will be very effective,” he said after deliberation. “There are lots of agendas, they seem to be angry about everything in the town, so I see it as maybe moving backwards. It seems to be a lot of animosity with some of them and the Town workers.”
Dunn believes there will be a big learning curve for the new councillors, and the opportunity to see first-hand how municipal politics works will be eye opening, in terms of the process and policies.
“They will see why we were making decisions in certain ways,” he said. “We’ll see how clear they want to be, in regards to telling everything that goes on, it was a huge learning curve for myself, never being involved in municipal politics and had a lot of support from Larry Martin.”
Dunn will return his attention to his career in the shipping industries and the hobbies he “had to give up” in order to fulfill his duties on council.
Newcomer Valerie Squires, spoke of her excitement over her newly elected position on council, and said she is eager to start learning the processes and get to work looking at the Town’s communications policy.
“I was pretty impressed with the outcome, because the residents wanted change,” she said.
“Well, I think it will be a curve ball … but I’ve sat in several council meetings, and I’m well aware of the process and the concerns.”
Squire campaigned on the platform of transparency and open communication, which she said, will be one of her priority when council resumes on Nov. 4.
“One of the things that came out of the forum, is more communications – revisit the communication policy,” she said.
“I understand the purpose of the policy is to prevent miscommunication, but there’s also time, when someone votes on a particular issues, and they don’t agree with the rest of council, they have the right to discussion. The mayor of Beiseker has a personal blog, I’d like to see that type of format (become available to councillors in Irricana).”
The new councillor will learn by fire as their upcoming calendar is already full.
“On Oct. 25, we (had) a council orientation and the organizational meeting,” Melton explained. “On Oct. 31, we will have Council Training with Gordon McIntosh, a renowned municipal trainer. On Nov. 4, will be our first council meeting with new council, Nov. 6 we have an inter-municipal meeting, Nov. 15 is the first Calgary Regional Partnership board meeting... much to do for a completely new council. We want to make sure the new council gets off on good footing with the training and orientation needed to give them the tools to work effectively in Irricana and with the entire region.”
