This past week, I had a poll question which asked:
If a Civic Election were held today, which of the 5 sitting WL City Councillors would be deserving of re-election?
The poll results (based on 13 votes and I thank all who participated):
Councillor SPS Rathor - 7 votes or 53% of all votes cast
Councillor Tom Barr - 6 votes or 46% of all votes cast
Councillors Geoff Bourdon/Laurie Walters/Sue Zacharias - 3 votes each or 23% of all votes cast
None of the above - 2 votes or 15% of all votes cast
While true that this poll is not scientific - I think it is fair to say that we can see a couple of trends leading to the November civic election:
1) If City Councillors Tom Barr and SPS Rathor both choose to run for re-election, they'll have little or no difficulty getting another mandate from City voters for the 2011-2014 Term
2) If I were Councillors Bourdon, Walters and Zacharias, and based on these poll results - I'd be a little concerned about my re-election chances, especially with names of potential City Councillor candidates like Jason Ryll or Dean Fulton (as mentioned in Ken Wilson's column in this past Wednesday's Advisor) being floated around and if Msrs Ryll/Fulton do decide to run, there is, in my view, a good chance of these gentleman easily knocking Councillors Bourdon, Walters and Zacharias off of WL Council, given that they are fairly well-known in Williams Lake (Ryll serves on the WL & District Chamber of Commerce & Fulton is a singer with the local Band "Fishbone" & casual WL Tribune columnist). You can bet that there will be others who will submit their names for the 6 City Councillor positions between now and October 14th (last possible date to submit election papers). And if I were any of these 3 City Councillors - I'd be worried about who is going to challenge them, given that they haven't really accomplished very much during this term of Williams Lake Council and strong City Councillor candidates could/may defeat these 3 City Councillors during this November's civic election
Also - Victoria has announced deadlines relating to the 2011 Local Gov't Elections in BC, as follows:
August 8th - Last date for all local governments (Districts of Wells/100 Mile, Cities of WL/Quesnel and the Cariboo Regional District Board) to adopt their 2011 Election Bylaw
August 28th - 1st date to give notice of advance elector registration which will expire on Sept 27th
Sept 4th - 1st date to give notice of nomination period beginning October 4th. Also, notice should be given this day that:
◦a copy of the list of registered electors will be available for public inspection at the local government offices starting October 4 until the end of general voting;
◦an elector may request that his or her personal information be omitted from or obscured on the list; and
◦an objection to the registration of a person as an elector may be made between October 4 and 4 p.m. on October 14.
October 4th - Opening of Nomination Period where the Chief Election Officer or their Deputy(ies) can receive nomination for Offices of Mayor, Councillor or Electoral Area Director
October 9th - 1st notice of Advance Voting on November 9th
October 14th - End of Nomination Period at 4:00pm this day
October 17th - End of Extended Nomination Period, if this is done by a local Chief Election Officer to recieve more nominations if there are more offices to be filled than nominations received
October 18th - End of Nomination Challenge Period where a challenge to a nomination for elected office must be filled by 4:00pm this day. If there is an extended nomination period, the deadline to challenge a nomination is October 21st
October 21st - Candidate List for elected office for Districts of 100 Mile/Wells, Cities of Quesnel/Williams Lake and the CRD Board are finalized
October 24th - Chief Election Officer declares election by voting, if more nominations than offices to be filled. Election by Acclamation is declared if nominations received is equal to or less than offices to be filled
November 9th - Advanced Voting Opportunity. Note - you may vote at this opportunity even if you are going to be in the District/City/Cariboo Regional District on November 19th
November 19th - General Voting Day in the Districts of Wells/100 Mile, Cities of Quesnel/Williams Lake and the Cariboo Regional District (if election by voting is necessary)
See info for local gov't elections, from the City of Quesnel here. Hopefully, the City of Williams Lake will make the same info available on its' website soon However, kudos to the City of Quesnel for making this information available so early, in advance of the general election in November
Finally - watch for Mayor Cook's most recent interview with Rick Roy. It will be playing, I assume, throughout the weekend and next week on Shaw Cable - Community Channel 10
Stay tuned here for announced candidates and places to vote as the information becomes available
5 comments:
your "statistics" are not statistically significant. You simply cant pull any accurate statistics out of less than 20 comments, for a population (n value) of approximately 11000 persons. By no means would your numbers yield anything other than a fluke. And concidering your website is pro surinder, it is really no suprise your site would yield a higher percentage of votes for him. And even then it was one vote.
As well, by lumping both barr and rathor into one automoton view, what are you trying to say?
Thanks for your comment...
I obviously don't apologize for my views here, even if they seem "pro Surinderpal Rathor". And out of 13people, 7 of those thought he was doing a good job and deserve another term and 6 obviously said Tom Barr also deserves another term
And the other votes - 3 for Councillors Bourdon, Walters and Zacharias - speak for themselves and I stand by my blog post
And certainly - my blog post on this (poll on re-election for the City Councillors) reflect the general views of others that I've heard from (defeat of Mayor Cook and Councillors Bourdon, Walters and Zacharias)in the community
interesting how you avoid answering the question. Your statistics only point out that 6 people like X they do not show a trend or point out that a larger population would swing in that direction. Given Rathors antics as of late,i suspect a real pole, given all the actual information may have a marked change in peoples viewpoints,,,...but i digress. Going back to your stats....what you post is saying that 6 people like chocolate icecream so therefore 11000 people would like to see chocolate icecream served....thats simply not the case given whom probably reads your blog already prefers chocolate ice cream over strawberry, vanilla, etc and would ultimately prefer that flavour as they are going to sites that promote that flavour.
Just accept it and try to stay away from statistical analysis or inferring from less than >.05 of the population that you have a "trend".You dont and given the inherent biases presented by supporting your website, you cant infer anything from your numbers.
This person is right. Your poll is completely meaningless.
Also, this term of council has raised taxes less than the last one, actually worked with police and native chiefs to fight crime, addressed graffiti, cut management salaries from where they were under Nelson, paved Mckenzie Avenue, and didn't do something stupid like wasted hundreds of thousands on a study for an event centre that was never going to be built.
Barr and Rathor aren't a single person. Rathor is a showboating councillor who cares less about doing what is right and more about getting votes. Barr is the real fiscal conservative. Rathor just pretends to be one. He loves to cut the ribbons on projects, but never wants to pay for them.
Maybe Fulton will knock off Rathor, ever consider that?
nothing eh.....not suprising. typical political move, when people are right, ignore the facts and focus on made up reality.
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