Niverville residents selected a new town councillor in the by-election on September 14. Nathan Dueck won the seat with 278 votes.
John Falk, who had been attempting to regain the seat he vacated earlier this year to run in the provincial election, came in second with 174 votes. Louise Billows fell into third place with 65 votes. Voter turnout is pegged at 19 percent.
“I knew what I had to do, which is introduce myself to the community,” Dueck says. “I thought there was only going to be about 20 percent of people voting, so it wasn’t surprising. But it was disappointing.”
He knocked on hundreds of doors in the two weeks leading up to the vote. “I first went to every single house in The Highlands, and I talked to every single person there—or at least I tried to—and by the time I had gone through Fifth Avenue, I was confident in what I wanted to bring to the table. I was confident in terms of what I wanted to do. I think I had a game plan at that point.”
Dueck says he had a meeting with Mayor Myron Dyck shortly after the election to welcome him to council and give him an orientation. Dueck was then sworn in at the regular council meeting held the evening of Tuesday, September 20.
“In the meeting, I was probably familiar with about 60 percent of the issues,” Dueck says of the learning curve. “I think overall the counsellors were really very helpful.”
Dueck adds that he will be working hard in the coming weeks to get himself up to speed. One area which he’s particularly eager to engage with is the effort to expand the use of town water. “As far as a benefit to the community, that’s going to be massive in terms of just bringing down people’s insurance costs. If we can bring down our cost of living by $300 to $400 per year just in fire suppressants, that’s going to be massive.”
After talking to as many people as he could during the campaign, and learning what their concerns were, Dueck wants to encourage people to speak up. His email address is included below.
“Everyone has my email address,” he says. “They’re more than welcome to use it. They’re more than welcome to email me any concerns they have, because it’s important to get involved.”
