‘Shocked’: All seats acclaimed in RM of McKillop byelection

After months of controversies — from tax hikes, to government inspections and boundary fights — the RM of McKillop is getting a new council, though they didn’t have to fight very hard for the seats.

This week is was announced that each of the six seats would be acclaimed.

“I’ve never heard of that ever in an election, I was shocked, because of all the issues I figured there’d be some opposition,” said Ken Swanston, the new councilor for Division 3.

Two of the six councilors are continuing on, having kept their seats, while the other four councilors are all new.

During October’s municipal election, ratepayers also voted in a referendum to change the RM’s division boundaries, which prompted the election that would have been held next month.

Swanston said he has no idea why none the other four former councilors tried to keep their seats.

“Maybe they just decided to hand it over and say ‘let’s see what these guys can do with it’, I don’t know.”

This isn’t Swanston’s first time running in an election. He served on the council for Strasbourg for two years, and as the town’s mayor for four. He said he liked the feeling of getting things done there, and hopes to do that in McKillop.

He decided to run after watching all the controversies over the past months.

“I just thought to run and try and maybe right the ship and get things back in order, and control spending, and make the RM a little bit more transparent and open to the public, and gain the ratepayers’ trust back.”

The deadline for nominations was Wednesday, and after everything was confirmed Swanston said he had been planning to campaign — sending out flyers to ratepayers. As of Thursday each of the candidates for the seats were officially acclaimed, and will take their seats at the end of February when the new division boundaries come into effect.

Swanston says he plans to stop the council from having so many meetings behind closed doors and make everything above board again. He also wants to get a grip on the financials and stop spending.

He also said he’s going to take a look at the tax hike from a few months ago which had so many ratepayers up in arms.

“We want to sit down and review and say ‘how did they come up with this?’, and not just for the resort communities but for everybody.”