SOUTH BRUCE – Mark Goetz will be the next mayor of South Bruce.
The current councillor received 1,311 votes to win the mayor’s seat. Incumbent Robert Buckle and challenger Rita Groen each received 788 votes.
Goetz campaigned on building a strong and united community while being consistent across the municipality and mindful of all ratepayers.
Groen’s campaign focused on building “trust again in our municipality” and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s deep geological repository (DGR) project. Buckle was seeking a third term as mayor.
Nigel Van Dyk and Mike Niesen were elected councillors at-large. Van Dyk received 1,805 votes, while Niesen received 1,770 in his successful re-election to council. Sandy Bunker (956) and Doug Kreller (922) were unsuccessful in their bids for a council seat.
In the Teeswater-Culross Ward, familiarity was again the order of the day as Mark Ireland and Mike McDonagh were both re-elected to council. McDonagh received 889 votes and Ireland 837, roughly 400 votes more than challengers Michelle Stein (460) and Gordon Ripley (407) received.
Audrey Bross and Jeff Goetz will be the Mildmay-Carrick Ward councillors; they were acclaimed as there were only two certified candidates in the ward.
The new council will be sworn in on Nov. 15.
Goetz excited for next four years
Goetz follows in the footsteps of his late father Bill, who was a former mayor of South Bruce.
He told Midwestern Newspapers on Tuesday that he is excited for the next four years.
“I’ve got a strong council behind me and I think the community spoke loud and clear with the results. I look forward to working with them and continuing to move South Bruce forward,” he said.
When asked what the first item on the agenda is for the next council, Goetz said there are a lot of things to address, but that none are more important than the other.
“We’ve been an amalgamated municipality for 22 years; we need to focus on growing that community together and function as one,” said Goetz.
The mayor-elect also cited economic development, infrastructure and the DGR as important items in the next four years.
Goetz thanked the voters of South Bruce for their support, and also thanked the candidates for running. He mentioned there was some “dirtiness” from certain candidates during the campaign, but believes that actually help his campaign.
“There was a lot of dirtiness from certain candidates – writing letters, banging on doors, a lot of mistruths. In a way, I’d like to thank those candidates because I believed it helped the candidates that were elected,” he said. “People don’t want to hear that stuff. To bang on somebody’s door and demand they vote a certain way, that’s not a democracy. I think they really helped us out that way.”
School trustees
Derrick Long was elected Bluewater District School Board trustee for Brockton and South Bruce, while Beverly Eckensweiler was re-elected Bruce Grey Catholic District School Board trustee.
Voter turnout
As expected, the highly-debated DGR project and interest from residents led to an increased voter turnout in the election on Monday night.
CAO Leanee Martin reported that voter turnout was 59.3 per cent, nearly 13 percentage points higher than the 2018 election. In 2018, voter turnout was 46.57 per cent.
