What's next for Saskatoon's new city council and mayor
Also, why vote results were delayed and where voter turnout ranks among recent elections
Bev Dubois is the longest-serving member among Saskatoon's newly elected city council.
Dubois's 17 non-consecutive years as councillor have taught her things she wants to share with the six new faces just elected to city council.
"You have to strategize and prioritize," Dubois said in an interview Thursday.
"You have to look after yourself and try not to do everything at once. We get a lot of invitations to things to attend, and I've seen councillors come on and they go to every single thing for the first like three to six months, and then they just get worn right out and can't do it anymore."
On Thursday, the city's returning official certified the results of the 2024 civic election. Voter turnout hit 35.04 per cent, up from 27.41 per cent in 2020, but still below the 2016 turnout of 40.09 per cent.
Six new faces are joining four incumbents on city council in addition to mayor-elect Cynthia Block, the first ever woman to hold the top job at city hall.
Ward 2 voters chose Senos Timon, who becomes the first Black person to sit on Saskatoon city council.
"Saskatoon … has become a more multicultural and diverse city and having representation at our local government that reflect who we are, reflects our community, means a lot," Timon told CBC's Saskatoon Morning on Thursday.
"It means a lot to the people of colour, the Black community and a lot of those who wanted to see them represented, who wanted to see them belong in our local government."
You can see the list of winning candidates for council and both school boards here.
The long, irregular hours of a city councillor can put stress on the mind, body and relationships, but Dubois said that can be minimized with enough sleep, a healthy diet and exercise.
What about political advice? Dubois said it comes down to professionalism: you fight it out during votes but leave the bad blood in council chambers.
"Not everybody is going to agree on every vote, but don't hold on to that. Let it go after the vote," Dubois said. "In the last term there were a lot of 6-5 votes, but we all still got along."
The new council will jump into the annual budget debate in a matter of weeks. Dubois said the new councillors shouldn't stress too much, because the city's new multi-year budgeting strategy means the new council won't have to start from scratch.
Among the new faces is Ward 1 councillor-elect Kathryn MacDonald, who unseated longtime councillor Darren Hill, who finished third behind Kevin Boychuk. MacDonald said her victory still feels surreal, but that she is humbled by the support for her first campaign.
"A lot of people are ready for change," MacDonald said in an interview Thursday. "I think I have worked really hard with my team to try to get on the doorsteps and just really connect with as many people in the community as possible. So just being out there day after day, hour after hour, just really trying to talk and have those conversations really connected with the community."
MacDonald said she expects the new council will contend with some big issues right away.
"We have a lot of potential," she said. "There's so much that we can do and the city is just growing.… Speaking on the doorsteps, I would say safety and homelessness will be probably top priority for a lot of people in the city. So it's about making sure that we're really make listening and following through, making sure that people feel safe to come downtown."
New mayor
Mayor-elect Cynthia Block spent Thursday in meetings and doing interviews. It's a fast pace, but one she said she's used to after two terms as Ward 6 councillor. Her campaign often cited affordability and homelessness as significant challenges facing the city.
"[Homelessness] is connected to so many of the other things we do as a city, including community safety," Block said on Thursday.
"When people are safely housed, community safety goes up for all of us. And so the urgency of getting people off the streets into safe housing is urgent.… But municipalities are on the front lines of a problem that we don't have all the tools to solve alone, which is why I really want to move forward with the task force as soon as we can to get residents and businesses at the table alongside fire, police and service providers."
Block secured 30,412 votes to defeat four other candidates running for mayor: Gordon Wyant, Don Atchison, Carry Tarasoff and Mike Harder. Wyant finished second with 20,529 votes.
Results delayed
Saskatoon's civic election results are final, voter turnout went up and there's nothing wrong with the new vote tabulation machines, says the city's returning officer.
An otherwise smooth rollout of city hall's new vote counting technology was marred on election night by the delayed release of results. Expectations were that early results would come quickly after polls closed at 8 p.m. CST, but numbers were slow to reach the public.
The first results were made public around 10 p.m., with intermittent updates until the last of 82 polls reported shortly before 1 a.m. Some results were printed out on paper and shown to reporters at city hall before 10 p.m.
In a statement released Thursday, the City of Saskatoon cited several factors for the delay.
There were still voters lined up at several polling stations when polls closed at 8 p.m., so results were delayed until every person in line had voted, according to the city's statement. A large number of mail-in ballots received prior to the 8 p.m. deadline also had to be processed and counted. And finally, the electronic tabulators, while working as promised, took longer than expected to upload results to the city's web portal.
"The election results reporting is accurate," Bryant said in the statement. "The new modernization processes were successful, and they will be further analyzed as the complete election is reviewed."
The city said there were no significant issues at polling stations on voting day. Bryant will submit a detailed returning officer report to city council once Elections Saskatoon finishes its review of the 2024 election.
The city declined an interview request for Bryant.
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