Greenwood voters elected a new mayor and a new city councillor in Saturday’s byelection, Oct. 10.
Mayor-elect Barry Noll won the three-way contest with 182 votes, beating runner up Gerry Shaw’s 163 votes, according to official results shared by Chief Election Officer Wendy Higashi.
Mayoral candidate Carolina Hopkins received 20 votes.
Reached by phone Saturday night, Noll chose his words very carefully.
“It was an election and we’re through it. We’re just absorbing it now,” he told The Times.
Councillor-elect Mark Seymour won his seat with 162 votes, beating runner-up Hendrik van Wyk’s 105 votes.
Council candidate Charlene Izuka got 85 votes.
A total of 717 people voted in the byelection, according to the results.
Nearly 300 people had voted by 2 p.m. Saturday, Higashi said — 134 at advance polls Sept. 30, plus 16 mail-in-ballots.
Some voters said they’d come out to exercise their civic duty, with others sharing their hopes for the future of Canada’s smallest city.
“I came out today because you can’t blame who gets in if you don’t vote,” Greenwood’s Faye Terashita said after casting her ballot at the city’s MacArthur Centre. Her husband Roy said he agreed.
“Hopefully, everybody quits fighting and gets it together. Hopefully, we vote in people that work together and not against each other,” Marie Goslin said.
“There needs to be more transparency and information made available to us,” added her husband Reg.
The Times will continue to update this story.