A returning mayor and a brand new council will form the next
government in the Village of Pemberton.
Incumbent Jordan Sturdy, who’s just completed his first term as mayor,
will assume the post again after being elected with almost three times the
votes of his challenger, departing councillor David MacKenzie.
Sturdy took 552 votes, while MacKenzie garnered 191.
“I’m looking forward to the next three years,” Sturdy said.
“This next three years is going to be an important time for Pemberton and I’m
glad to be involved.”
He said one of his biggest priorities in his second term will
be initiating a governance restructure study that will examine how to better incorporate
residents of Area C.
When someone says they’re from Pemberton, it doesn’t always
mean they’re from the village — they could just as easily live in Area C,
which boasts approximately 2,600 people and is governed by a regional district
board rather than a local government.
Sturdy hopes that a governance restructuring can be done at the
same time as a hoped-for boundary expansion that could bring 20 new areas into
the village.
“I don’t think you can overemphasize the importance of
redefining and recreating Pemberton into one Pemberton,” he said. “We have to
have a foundation to build on as a single community. And whether that’s
Pemberton and all of Area C or part of Area C, that’s the issue that needs to
be decided by all the people who live here.”
Not a single councillor will be returning as all four of the
incumbents decided not to run again. There are, however, faces familiar to
Pemberton that will be taking seats at the new council.
Ted Craddock, a former councillor in Squamish and Fort Nelson,
was the top vote-getter with 570.
“I don’t think there’s any loser when you put your name forward
in a community for an elected position,” he said. “I know the folks that aren’t
going to be sitting at the table are still going to be working hard to make Pemberton
a good place to live.”
Susie Gimse, who has served as director of Squamish-Lillooet
Regional District Electoral Area C for 15 years and will continue to do so, was
elected to council with 433 votes.
Lisa Ames is also a familiar face to Pembertonians. A realtor
with the Whistler Real Estate Company famous for her “I believe in Pemberton”
slogan, she took a council seat with 552 votes, the second highest total.
Before her election she was voted Pemberton’s 2006 Citizen of
the Year and is currently president of the Pemberton Centennial Rotary Club.
“It feels good, I’m very pleased,” she said in an interview.
When asked what she would first attend to as a councillor, she
said that working with the rest of council is a top priority.
“I think first things first, we need to get together as a group
and establish some goals and prioritize those,” Ames said, adding that boundary
expansion will be an important focus.
“Obviously with the boundary extension referendum, the
community showed that it wants us to move forward on that, so I believe that’s
a priority,” she said, adding that recreation and trails will also figure as
top priorities.
Alan LeBlanc took the fourth and last council seat with 412
votes.
A Pemberton resident since 1959, LeBlanc has also served as
chairman of the Pemberton Valley Dyking District and helped create the
village’s Advisory Design Review Committee.
His top priority as a councillor is making Pemberton a better
place for young people.
“I’d really like to engage the youth in our area,” he said.
“That’s our future and what we do today affects them when it comes their turn
to look after things, so I just want to get an area or community spirit
rekindled.”
He hopes to do that by opening a youth centre in Pemberton, an
institution that has a building but has not yet opened its doors to the public.
“The building’s been completed since August, and I can’t see
why it should be that difficult to get it open,” he said. “It has to be
inspected and I’m sure that with very little effort, I can find the funds to
hire an inspector or perhaps even have an inspector donate some of his time to
get that youth centre open.”
Sturdy said the youth centre has been located at the site of
Pemberton’s old library and said it hasn’t opened because a building inspector
needs to look at it — and Pemberton doesn’t have one of its own.
Currently the village is contracting a building inspector who can fit in her
duties in Pemberton once a week, but that’s not enough to get the necessary
work done to get it open.
“She has to go through that building and do our code analysis
and the whole bit,” Sturdy said. “I know all of us who have been involved in
this project from the beginning want to see that youth centre completed and
it’s all a matter of building inspector capacity.”
Sturdy said the village has been advertising for a building
inspector for four or five months, but thus far hasn’t been able to hire one.
The two candidates who were not elected were Peter Pocklington,
who took 278 votes, and Cam McIvor, a proponent of the GEMS school and a prime
mover behind the proposed Ravens Crest neighbourhood. McIvor received 263
votes.
Dave Walden was elected to a second term as Pemberton’s school trustee on the Howe Sound School District with 459 votes. Second-time challenger John Burleson took 224 votes.
