Promising increased taxes and sustainability, incumbent mayor Bev Buckway swept to a second win in last night’s election.
Buckway led throughout the night as results trickled in from the polling stations.
In the end, she took 2,540 votes, or 60 per cent of the vote.
Her opponent, Al Fedoriak only received 1,580 votes or 37 per cent of ballots cast. And 98 votes were rejected.
After being congratulated by Fedoriak, Buckway stared up at the results displayed on a large screen in council chambers, reviewing the list of councillors.
Four of five incumbents had won back their seats.
“I think there’s a message there that the things that the city has been doing are very positive and people are supportive of that,” she said.
“It’s good to have some stability with some incumbents and it’s nice to have a few new faces.
“Ranj (Pillai) is obviously the young guy and this is (Dave) Stockdale’s tenth term, so there will be some experience there.”
Besides age and experience, there will also be a gender balance with three women on council, she noted.
The landslide victory wasn’t unexpected, said Buckway.
“In the last two elections, I was ahead in all of the polls, so this is just consistency,” she said.
“And it’s very humbling, let me tell you.”
It also shows the mayor has the mandate of the people, she added.
But voter turnout was dismal.
Only 4,218 of 11,508 registered voters cast ballots.
“It’s awful, it really is awful,” said Buckway.
“And I don’t know what we can do to get a better turnout at the polls.”
It wasn’t a cold day, there were a lot of advertisements, and advanced, special and mobile voting was available, so there really wasn’t any excuse.
You could interpret the low turnout a number of ways, said Buckway.
“You could interpret it that everybody was happy with the status quo, but that’s not the point,” she said.
“My mother always used to say, ‘If you don’t vote you can’t complain.’”
“So I guess we know that we can accept complaints from only a small number of people,” she continued.
“How does that sound?”
Contact Chris Oke at
chriso@yukon-news.com