Castlegar’s city council set in motion the process that will lead up to a by-election on Saturday, Oct. 29 to fill the vacant council seat left by the sudden passing of councillor Kevin Chernoff in May.
At Monday’s city council meeting Tracey Butler was appointed chief election officer and Nicole Brown and Carolyn Rempel were appointed deputy election officers.
The ten-day nomination period will be from 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13 until 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 23. The preliminary declaration of candidates will then take place immediately following the close of the nomination period on Sept. 23 at 4 p.m. Nomination packages can be found on the city’s website or be picked up at City Hall.
Advanced polling will take place from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Oct. 18-19 at the Castlegar Community Forum. On election day, polls will be open at the Castlegar Community Complex from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The Local Government Act requires that when a vacancy occurs a by-election must be held as soon as practicable. Due to the large amount of residents that take summer holidays possibly resulting in low voter turnout, the decision was made to hold the election in the fall.
The act also requires that the election date must be set on a Saturday no later than 80 days after the date the chief election officer is appointed, thus the reason the official appointing of the election officer at a council meeting triggers the start of the election process.
The new councillor will likely be sworn in at a city council meeting on Nov. 21.
The Castlegar News will be running profiles of all candidates in our Oct. 13 edition, just prior to the advanced polls.
Between now and the election the Castlegar News would be pleased to publish letters to the editor regarding election issues. However, as per our letters policy, letters should be no longer than 300 words and may be edited for brevity, clarity, legality, accuracy and topicality. Personal attacks of any kind will not be published. We will not be publishing letters from the candidates as they will have the opportunity to express their views in a Q & A with our reporters.