Harry Hughes had never seen a campaign quite like this one.
The long-time mayor said he had close to 40 large election signs either stolen or vandalized during a contentious campaign that ended Tuesday evening with Hughes defeating two other candidates to return to the mayor’s chair.
“I’ve never seen this type of thing in an Oro-Medonte election,” Hughes said. “But I like to use a quote from Wayne Gretzky, who said, ‘They never boo the bad players'.”
But now that the election is over, Hughes said he hopes those who opposed some of the previous council’s work will get behind the new council.
“I don’t think there’s any question that the electorate have spoken and this is a democracy,” he added.
While Hughes is back at the helm in Oro-Medonte, this time around he had to actually mount a campaign – something that didn’t occur during the previous two municipal elections.
“The last two times, I was acclaimed,” Hughes said. “It’s not fun to sit on the sidelines.”
Hughes said he covered a lot of ground since the writ was dropped this spring.
“I think I was walking more than 20,000 steps a day,” he said, noting that during those many steps he met a lot of great people and was warmly welcomed while knocking on doors. “I also had a really supportive team.”
A crowd of close to 40 area residents and municipal candidates gathered at the township’s Line 7 offices to hear the results first-hand.
Voter turnout for the election was 42.6 per cent, with the township opting to extend voting until Tuesday at 8 p.m. to deal with a computer glitch that also hit a number of other municipalities across the province. Its office stayed open until midnight Monday to allow those wishing to cast paper ballots a chance to have their voices heard.
With 3,011 votes, Hughes defeated former councillor Sandy Agnew (2,226 votes) and long-time councillor John Crawford, who finished second with 2,477 votes.
“I guess I’m disappointed, but I did have a lot of support,” said Crawford, who had served four terms as the township’s Ward 4 councillor and is also president of the Oro World’s Fair.
“Four terms is a long time to be on council, but I will continue serving the community.”
Agnew, who is active with AWARE Simcoe, where he advocates more openness and transparency in local and Simcoe County governments, said that while he’s disappointed with the election result, he will continue to monitor local and county governments.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’ll still be at the county meetings videotaping the proceedings.”
Scott Jermey, who had been a councillor, became the township’s new deputy mayor by defeating long-time incumbent Ralph Hough, receiving more than two times the number of votes with 5,041 to 2,509 for Hough.
“It’s very gratifying,” said Jermey, who began campaigning in May. “It’s been a long process. I must have knocked on 6,000 doors. I’ve been pretty much going straight for five months.”
Joining Hughes and Jermey at the council table are Ian Veitch (Ward 1), Scott Macpherson (Ward 2-incumbent), Cathy Keane (Ward 3), Shawn Scott (Ward 4) and Randy Greenlaw (Ward 5).
Hughes said while he’s sad to see some great veteran councillors leave, he looks forward to working with the newcomers.
“Some were trying for the first time,” he said. “It’s good to see they want to put their name forward. There’ll be a change and a bit of a learning curve for them, but I think we have some really good people coming forward.”
Hughes said continuing to improve and rebuild the township’s infrastructure will provide the biggest challenge for the new council over the next four years.
“All the time that I’ve been mayor, infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges we have,” he said, noting many other municipalities are experiencing the same issues without as much support from other levels of government.
“It costs $1.2 million per bridge (to repair) and we have 26 of those.”
As well, like other municipalities facing infrastructure challenges, Oro-Medonte wasn’t the only municipality to extend voting.
Dominion Voting Systems blamed a “co-location provider” for limiting bandwidth during online voting on Oct. 22 causing slowdowns and time-outs that brought voting to a standstill in 51 municipalities across Ontario.
But the decision to extend voting didn’t sit well with at least one Oro-Medonte resident.
“I guess the question is, who is this other company that wasn’t fulfilling their contractual obligations?” Jacob Kearey-Moreland told Village Media.
Kearey-Moreland, who ran as a Simcoe North co-operative interdependent candidate in the last federal election, said the issue is bigger than this mishap.
“If Dominion is claiming that they had unlimited bandwidth, then either they’re passing the buck, or there’s some other kind of issue here that needs to be investigated. The point is, for me, our municipality has privatized our elections.”
While there were advance voting options with paper ballots in Oro-Medonte Township, Kearey-Moreland wishes there would have been paper options on election day – something township council voted against last year.
Township clerk Karen Way said this election was intended to be a transition year from paper ballots to online only voting in the township, with both options available. The intention is to eventually get to a point where ballots will be cast online only.
Despite the Dominion setback, Way said it’s too early to tell if that plan will now change.
“We’ve had thousands of people successfully vote online this time around, and I think that’s a great turnout,” she said. “That system was functioning fully except for those two hours on election night.”
An earlier controversy surrounded the advance polling with some residents crying foul over Hughes attending local polling stations, though Hughes said that had been blown out of proportion.
On Oct. 13 at the advance vote held at the township office, Hughes was present, acting as a scrutineer.
In a letter sent to Village Media, resident Paul Sanderson said he was offended by Hughes attending the polling station at township offices on Saturday, where, Sanderson says, he talked to voters.
According to Hughes, it is a non-issue, which is becoming a common occurrence this election as one of many attacks on him by opponents.
“That is so erroneous, it’s incredible,” said Hughes. “I was in the voting poll to see how the voting was going. A number of people know me, and they said hello. That’s all that happened.”
– With files from Village Media
