Castlegar's city council for the 2011-14 term was sworn in at the inaugural meeting of council on Dec. 5 at the Community Forum.
A solid crowd of around 50 family members, friends, and well-wishers was on hand during the meeting to witness the ceremony.
The councillors, Deb McIntosh, Russ Hearne, Kevin Chernoff, Dan Rye, and Sue Heaton-Sherstobitoff, and Mayor Lawrence Chernoff, marched to the forum in a procession led by bagpiper Archie Stewart.
Judge Fabbro gave each councillor and the mayor the oath of office before swearing each in.
"It was good," said Rye. "It was very short, but I knew it was going to be. I'm looking forward to getting down to work. I'm sure the next meeting will be more intense than this one."
Rye enjoyed the experience of being sworn in and admits to being nervous.
"I've been thinking of this for a couple of years," he said. "It's been a long time coming. The election process is over and the people voted for me and want me to come in and do a good job for them - and that's what I plan on doing."
At the meeting, mayor Chernoff assigned each councillor his or her new committee appointments and also gave out the deputy mayor schedule for 2012.
Dates were also set for 2012's council meetings which start on Tuesday, Jan. 3 and conclude on Monday, Dec. 17. Council meetings continue to be the first and third Monday of every month, except for July and August which have only one meeting each. In case of a holiday Monday, the meeting is moved to Tuesday (Jan. 3, May 22, and Sept. 4).
Both Rye and Heaton-Sherstobitoff took part in the new councillor training seminar in Rossland last week.
"It was very good," said Rye. "It was very intense. Wednesday was very long, a 13 hour day. We start at eight in the morning and went to nine o'clock at night, but we had a lot of very good speakers. Thursday we started again at eight in the morning and went to about three o'clock. We learned a lot. We learned about the process of being a councillor. We learned about municipal finance, municipal insurance, parliamentary rules and just a lot of good information."
Heaton-Sherstobitoff also found the training seminar informative.
"It was a lot to absorb. There's lots to know," she said. "Hopefully, in the next year I'll begin to understand how civic politics works from the inside."
Heaton-Sherstobitoff, who ran on a platform of working for the people, got to work early, questioning whether council needed to spend the taxpayer's money to leave town to have a retreat in Ainsworth in January.
"Hopefully, I can be that voice of reason/voice for the people," she said. "I think we should be conscientious of where our taxpayers' money is being spent around the table. I don't think our taxpayers' money, if we can help it, should be spent outside of our community. We should be investing in our community. I'm pretty sure we have some quiet places here where we can do strategic thinking."