BY BILL PHILLIPS
Prince George voters gave their stamp of approval to the current city council while, at the same time, embracing youth.
All seven incumbents were re-elected Saturday night, including Lyn Hall who easily out-paced rival Willy Enns by a count of 11,702 votes to 1,045. Brian Skakun topped the city council race with 9,475 votes, newcomer Kyle Sampson polled second with 8,304, Garth Frizzel captured 8,199, Murry Krause managed 8,008 votes, Susan Scott recived 7,775, Terri McConnachie 7,111, Frank Everitt 6,680, and newcomer Cori Ramsay 5,693 to round out the councillors-elect. Dave Fuller (5,001), Cameron Stolz (4,971), Viv Fox (3,697), Chris Wood (2,266), and Paul Serup (1,746) did not get elected.
“I’m exciting, pleased, ready to go to work on Monday morning,” Hall said of the victory.
Hall said the campaign was a little different. Enns only attended one forum and really didn’t campaign at all.
“The minute we knew Mr. Enns was going to be our competition, we adjusted our campaign accordingly,” Hall said. “We just wanted to get the message out about what we’d done over the last four years and I wanted to get my message out about what I had planned for the next four and I think we were really able to do that.”
The re-election of all the incumbents seeking re-election was a validation of the current council, who all campaigned on how they got along and how the city did well over the past four years.
“We saw during the campaign that the incumbents were strong and they got stronger as the campaign went on,” Hall said, adding that combined with newcomers Kyle Sampson and Cori Ramsay, he’s looking forward to working with the new council. “There’s some very impressive candidates there who laid out a strong four-year commitment and what they wanted to see happen.”
Hall will be meeting with all over the new councillors and incumbents over the next week or so and start discussing committee formations.
For now, though, he will enjoy the victory and the validation of the previous four years.
“I’m very, very happy with the numbers,” he said. “I came into this job with a real plan in place and I look back on it and I’m really excited about being able to achieve a lot of it. There’s more to do and I’m really keen on looking for more development in our community to keep our young workers to stay. I want seniors to stay so that means I have to work even harder on seniors housing. It’s exciting. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a great job.”
