Fort St. John Council looks forward to another four years

Davies believes his roots and work within the community played a big part in his results, but also took time to tip his cap to all that put their names in for the election.

“There was 12 fantastic candidates running. I was talking to my wife and other councillors and I couldn’t really get a feel going into this election,” he admitted. “They were all stellar candidates. Any six elected would have done a fantastic job for the city. I’m involved in the community; I’m engaged in the community so I think that that played a bit of a role, and being born and raised here. It’s humbling. I thank all of the residents that came out to vote.”

Going forward Davies believes that there are a number of issues Council will need to examine, including Site C, LNG, and the health care situation.

“Growth is a big one and I think if you looked at any of the platforms growth was big because growth is big. That’s going to be what’s affecting us over the next four years,” he said. “There’s going to be some big stuff happening here with the possibility of Site C happening. We’ve got the LNG that we’re going to be rolling out. Managing growth and managing growth well is going to be a huge issue. The health care shortage, there’s hardly a person that it doesn’t affect in our community. We need to do something about that.”

Mayor Lori Ackerman was already assured of maintaining her position after winning by acclamation, however she still attended the announcement of the results. She believes that while it’s a positive to have all of council returning, it wouldn’t have been a bad thing either if new individuals would have been elected.

“There certainly won’t be a learning curve. Everyone should be up to date on all of the issues and we’ll be able to run at the pace that we need to be running considering what the community is facing,” she stated. “The reality is, is that new voices would bring different ideas. It’s always important to debate and bring new ideas to the table. The community has chosen that the Council we had is going to move forward and carry on so we accept that.”

Chief Election Officer Janet Prestley said that while voter turnout was down from the 2011 election, she was satisfied with the 2,073 figure for this election considering the circumstances. She was also pleased to see an increase in participation from young families.

“I thought it was a good turnout considering we didn’t have a Mayor race and we didn’t have a referendum. From the people that turned out there was a lot of younger generation voters because traditionally it is middle and older people that come out. To see the amount of younger people with families coming in to vote, that’s encouraging.

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