The votes have been cast and counted, and the winners have been announced. (Update: the votes have now been recounted, as a bunch of ballots had not been counted.)
Congratulations to Tumbler Ridge’s new council: Darryl Krakowka, who received 258 260 votes, a margin of a mere 23 25 votes over previous mayor Don McPherson. Rick Consalvi received 78 votes.
“This is an exciting and opportune time for Tumbler Ridge,” says Mayor-elect Krakowka (who signed his victory post on Facebook as “Mayor Daryl Krakowka,”) “There is so much opportunity knocking on our door. It’s time to capitalize on it. I will serve Tumbler Ridge with honest and open governance and commit to working with all stakeholders as Mayor to build a healthy and sustainable community.”
Councillors elected were Chris Norbury, Roxanne Gulick, Ron Hofman, Luana Dusseault, Nicole Noksana and Ken Klikach.
While it appears that a number of ballots were either missed or miscounted in the initial count, and a new count was issued Sunday afternoon, the election results stay the same, only the total number of votes have changed. For instance, Chris Norbury was initially reported as having 380 votes. That number is now at 458, or 17.8 percent of the total number of votes cast. (Which, might I say, is a silly way to count votes. According to Civic Info BC, there were 3,132 ballots cast by 1813 eligible voters. If 573 total ballots were cast, he will have received 80 percent of the vote. Once town hall is open tomorrow and I can talk to people, I’ll have more math to share. Yay! Math!)
571 573 people cast their votes for mayor, or less than a third of the eligible voters in this election. That’s down from the 53.5 percent last election. There are 1813 estimated eligible voters in Tumbler Ridge, which means that about 31.6 percent of the population turned out this election.
However, it will be at least a day or two until the results are known for the regional referendums.
At stake there is regional funding for both the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark as well as the Museum.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
