Banff’s four incumbent councillors were delivered a solid mandate from residents in Monday’s (Oct. 21) municipal election, with Stavros Karlos, Grant Canning, Brian Standish and Chip Olver all securing another term on council.
As Banff’s longest serving councillor, Olver was elected to her seventh term in office with 930 votes, while Canning received 1,037 votes and Standish secured 1,094.
Karlos was top vote getter with 1,316 votes as he heads into his third term on council. New faces include Ted Christensen with 879 votes and Corrie DiManno with 1,310 votes.
The big story in this election is 26-year-old DiManno, who trailed Karlos by a mere six votes with 1,310, taking 69.8 per cent of the vote. She will now carry the mantle as the youngest politician to ever sit at the Banff council table.
“It’s crazy,” said DiManno, who ran a strong social media campaign, as well as door knocked in many local neighbourhoods, to rally the tourist town’s younger population to get out and vote.
“It feels like I got across my passion for Banff and my determination to represent everyone as best as I can. I feel very honoured. It’s touched my heart.”
DiManno, who will resign from her position as a journalist-photographer at the Bow Valley Crag and Canyon, said she’s proud of all the young people who came to make their voices heard.
“I hope they feel empowered and feel more a part of this community after showing us who they want to represent them,” said DiManno.
“One thing I heard throughout my campaign is: ‘young people don’t vote’, but yesterday they showed us that they do care about this town and its future, and that is really inspiring to me.”
Despite low voter turnout among young people in Canada, there are an increasing number of people under the age of 35 running in elections across the country – municipal, provincial and federal.
Edmonton residents voted in 34-year-old Don Iverson as their mayor on Monday, while 33-year-old Evan Woolley took down a two-term incumbent in Ward 8 in the City of Calgary.
DiManno joins that new breed of voters running for office; refusing to let age stop them from having a say. This election saw the highest voter turnout in about 20 years for Banff.
“A lot of my friends said they had never voted before and they were going to go vote,” said DiManno.
“With that demographic, maybe I inspired them, but they inspired me for sure.”
Karlos was 29 years old when he was first elected in 2007. At the time, his colleagues at the council table were all over 50 years old, with the exception of Karen Sorensen.
Re-elected with a 70 per cent approval rating and 300 more votes than he received in the 2010 municipal election, Karlos said he’s honoured to be back at the council table.
“I am blown away because I didn’t expect to have that much support,” he said. “It’s a real honour and humbling and I am pretty excited to serve Banff again for four years now.”
Karlos said he believes all four incumbents were re-elected for a mix of reasons.
“It may indicate, by and large, citizens are generally happy, but I also think citizens realize we have experience,” he said. “They have voiced their concerns and their expectation is we continue to move forward on issues important to them like trying to solve traffic and parking problems.”
Standish, who is generally quiet at the council table, but never afraid to take a stand, most notably on contentious issues, said he’s happy to be back working with incumbent councillors as well as two new faces.
“Not only did we get elected back in, but we got quite a few votes and I think that’s certainly an indication we did a good job and the people of Banff are happy,” he said.
Standish said his top priority moving forward in the next few months is transportation, noting he looks forward to the administrative report in the coming month on the experiments undertaken this summer.
“Obviously, there’s been a number of experiments and not all of them have worked. It’s actually really discouraging because for all the ones we got, I don’t think there’s more than a handful that worked,” he said.
Canning said he’s excited to have been re-elected to his second term in office.
“I am thrilled to get another mandate from the people of Banff. It’s such a tremendous honour,” he said.
“The sense I was getting from people in the community is there really wasn’t a sense of anger. We could always do better, but it seems most people were quite happy with how things were going.”
Canning said addressing transportation concerns continues to be a issue.
“Transportation is well on its way, but discussion on paid parking will be coming up and that will be a robust discussion,” he said. “That discussion is something I’d like to deal with sooner rather than later.”
Olver, who was first elected to council in 1994, did not get back to the Outlook by press time.
Newcomer Ted Christensen, who has been a public member of Banff’s development appeal board, said he’s pleased and thrilled to have won a seat on council.
“You never enter into these ventures without seeing yourself as being successful, because nobody wants to back a loser, but I was a little stunned,” he said.
Christensen, who owns Home Wise Renovations, said he has been preparing all summer long to begin the work of balancing his business with political life and said he is up to the challenge.
First up, he said he wants to try to establish a better voice for small businesses, investigate a public works committee and talk about solutions to allow Banff Public Library to increase its operating hours.
“l don’t want to let the dust settle. I want to get at it,” he said.
Two pro-business candidates failed to win a seat on council. Ken McMurdo got 434 votes and Jeff Mitchell of Banff Lake Louise Tourism missed a seat with 764.
Also unsuccessful in the quest were Hardi Soukup with 542 votes and Steven Fournier with 341.
The total number of residents casting a ballot in the 2013 municipal election was 1,878, up from 2010 when 1,619 voted. It was the strongest showing in 20 years.
Based on municipal census population statistics, there was a 28 per cent voter turnout, but that does not take into account who’s eligible to vote.
The new council will be sworn in on Monday, Oct. 28 at Banff Town Hall and hold its first meeting immediately after.
