Roy Ludwig’s second victory in a mayoral election in Estevan was even more convincing than his first.
Ludwig captured 1,809 of the 2,453 votes cast for mayor, or 73.7 per cent of the votes, in the Oct. 26 civic election in Estevan. James Halladay received 453 votes (18.5 per cent) to finish second and Rhyan Hagel came in third with 191 votes (7.8 per cent).
Ironically, Ludwig received an almost identical number of votes as he did in the 2012 civic election. In that vote, he had 1,807 of the 3,018 votes cast for mayor.
Ludwig will be at the helm of a council that will be relatively short on experience. Incumbent councillors Greg Hoffort, Trevor Knibbs and Dennis Moore were re-elected to council. Moore has the most experience with seven years as a councillor.
The other incumbents, Brian Johnson and Kevin Smith, were defeated.
Newcomers Shelly Veroba, Travis Frank and Lyle Yanish will round out council.
“I welcome the new councillors, and I look forward to working with them,” said Ludwig. “I know they’re all good people, and they’ll do their very best in working together with me to make the city of Estevan a better place.”
The mayor admitted he was surprised to see three new faces on council, and he was surprised that Johnson was not re-elected after 16 years on council.
“At the end of the day, the time comes when the people – and the people are always right – decide that it’s time for you to call it a day,” said Ludwig.
Cameron Robock was the other candidate running for councillor.
The new council will have a number of issues to deal with immediately, starting with the 2017 budget. Council is expected to continue with debt repayment efforts. The rehabilitation of King Street is also expected to begin next year.
City beautification efforts are also expected to remain a priority. Ludwig believes council needs to continue to spend money to boost the community’s appearance.
Council has also been working on large federal grants for a couple of projects. One would see Rafferty Dam added as a source for Estevan’s drinking water. Boundary Dam is currently Estevan’s drinking water source.
The other grant would be used for residual management.
“Right now, we’re dumping some residual from the water treatment plant into the Souris River, which is probably not the way you should go environmentally,” said Ludwig.
The money would allow the city to transfer residuals to the lagoons.
Economic development is another issue that came up during the election campaign. The city has been without an economic development officer since Manpreet Sangha stepped down during the summer to take a similar job in Ontario.
Ludwig is in favour of hiring a replacement for Sangha, and he believes most of council are onside as well. He expects economic development will be a key issue for council during the next four years.
“I think it’s important that we work closely with the Estevan Chamber of Commerce, with all of the stakeholders, business people and leaders in our community to try to attract more business to our city,” said Ludwig.
Ideas such as a manufacturing business and industrial tourism could help build the economy of the city. Ludwig believes the carbon capture and storage project at the Boundary Dam Power Station could help attract more visitors to the city.
Ludwig admits he was disappointed with the voter turnout. The final figure was 2,477 votes cast, since a handful of voters didn’t vote for one of the mayoral candidates. About 8,000 people were eligible to vote in the election, so the voter turnout was about 30 per cent.
“We’d like to increase that number if we could, to get more people engaged,” said Ludwig. “We talked about how we would do that at our debate.”
The more people are engaged, the better it will be for council.
He was hoping that this election would attract a similar number of voters as the 2012 vote, but it was down by more than 500 voters. Ludwig hinted that the economic downturn might have played a role, since there are fewer people in the community.
The new council was slated to be sworn in at a special meeting on Nov. 1, and an orientation session for the new councillors is scheduled for Nov. 2. Their first regular meeting will be Nov. 7.
