Greater Sudbury municipal election, 2006
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The Greater Sudbury municipal election, 2006 was held in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada on November 13, 2006. All municipal elections in the province of Ontario are held on the same date; see Ontario municipal elections, 2006 for elections in other cities.
The election chose the mayor and city councillors who will sit on Greater Sudbury City Council. As with other Ontario municipal elections, the 2006 election marked the first time that Ontario's city councils will sit for a four-year term; until 2006, municipal elections were held every three years.
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[edit] Issues
The primary issue in the 2006 elections was the municipal amalgamation of 2001. Prior to January 1, 2001, the current city of Greater Sudbury consisted of seven separate municipalities, together comprising the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. On that date, the provincial government of Ontario dissolved all seven former municipalities and the regional government, merging them all into the current city government. However, many residents of the outlying communities in the city have alleged that their municipal services have deteriorated significantly since the amalgamation.
In early 2006, residents of the former town of Rayside-Balfour began to campaign for the deamalgamation of the city and the return of the former municipal government structure. The city government has refused to endorse the petition — even if the petition were endorsed by the city, however, any deamalgamation referendum would still require the consent of the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, which has set a number of very strict conditions for permitting a referendum.
Mayor David Courtemanche has announced an advisory committee, chaired by former Member of Provincial Parliament Floyd Laughren, to consult with communities in the city and seek solutions to their concerns about municipal government services. This committee will not submit its final report to the city until some time after the 2006 municipal election, although a summary of the issues raised during the initial consultations, as well as an outline of the final report process, will be presented in advance of the election.
In June of 2006, the city was also criticized for its handling of a leave of absence taken by fire chief Don Donaldson, as well as a study which found that Sudbury had the highest-paid mayor and councillors of any Ontario city in its population range. Council has been also criticized for several development-related decisions, including a $13 million expansion of the Kingsway between Minnow Lake and Coniston, a controversial decision to permit construction of a new school and a medical office building on the Lily Creek marshlands near Science North, and a project to increase sewer capacity in the South End (Ward 9) area by construction of a rock tunnel. Following a $4 million budget shortfall in the latter project, the city imposed special development fees on new residential and commercial construction in the community.
With the recent takeovers of two of the city's major employers, Falconbridge Ltd. by Swiss mining giant Xstrata and Inco Limited by the Brazilian company CVRD, and the recent financial crisis faced by the city's Northern Breweries, the issues of jobs and economic development in the city were also expected to play a role in the election campaign.
Some candidates have also cited the desire to see more women serve on council; only six of the 45 declared candidates in the 2006 election were women, and three of those six were incumbent councillors. In the final election results, four of the five women running for council seats were elected; one female ward candidate was not elected, nor was mayoral candidate Lynne Reynolds.
[edit] Mayoral race
| Candidate | Vote | % |
|---|---|---|
| John Rodriguez | 28,419 | 51.9 |
| David Courtemanche (x) | 16,600 | 30.3 |
| Lynne Reynolds | 8,996 | 16.4 |
| David Chevrier | 429 | 0.8 |
| Marc Crockford | 159 | 0.3 |
| Ed Pokonzie | 92 | 0.2 |
| J. David Popescu | 76 | 0.1 |
Lynne Reynolds was a councillor for Ward 6 when she declared her candidacy for mayor. John Rodriguez is a former federal Member of Parliament for the city's Nickel Belt electoral district. Popescu and Pokonzie are perennial candidates in the area, who have rarely garnered more than 100 votes in any election; during the 2003 election, Popescu was found guilty of assaulting his mother and sentenced to three years of probation. [1]
Crockford is a local landlord and businessman who declined to participate in mayoral debates or even to release a photo of himself to the media, preferring to conduct his campaign entirely over the Internet. [2] Chevrier runs a local business, selling air and water filtration systems. [3]
Earlier in 2006, local media speculated that former mayor Jim Gordon might run for mayor again as well, but in September he ended that speculation by endorsing Rodriguez. Rodriguez was also endorsed by 2003 mayoral candidate Paul Marleau, former city councillor Gerry McIntaggart and the Sudbury and District Labour Council.
A Sudbury Star opinion poll published on November 1 placed Rodriguez in the lead with 49 per cent support among decided voters, with Courtemanche trailing at 30 per cent and Reynolds at 20 per cent. The other four candidates had approximately one per cent support combined. [4]
On the final weekend before the election, Reynolds garnered the endorsement of the Sudbury Star, while the community newspaper Northern Life endorsed Courtemanche.
[edit] City council
When the current city of Greater Sudbury was created in 2001, the city was divided into six wards, each of which was represented by two councillors. In 2005, the city council adopted a new ward structure, in which the city would now be divided into twelve wards with a single councillor per ward.
This redistribution of wards was itself controversial, because it divided some communities within the city that were formerly closely associated with each other — for example, the former town of Rayside-Balfour was split, with Azilda falling in Ward 4 and Chelmsford falling in Ward 3. The original ward structure had also been designed to balance political power, crossing the pre-2001 municipal boundaries to help prevent the urban core of the city from ignoring the needs of the more rural communities. Under the new ward structure, however, five of the twelve wards are purely urban, and it has been alleged that this may weaken the city's ability to respond to the needs of residents outside of the central city.
In Ward 12, the city's website initially named John Caruso as the winner with 1,798 votes, to challenger Joscelyne Landry-Altmann's 1,756. However, the city later reported an apparent technical error in the upload of vote totals to the website, with 460 votes mistakenly uploaded twice. In the adjusted count, Landry-Altmann won over Caruso by a similarly narrow margin. Caruso called for a recount, [5] which was conducted on December 1 and confirmed Landry-Altmann's victory. [6]
| Candidate | Vote | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ward 1 | |||
| Joe Cimino | 3,016 | 68.6 | |
| Carlos Reyes | 1001 | 22.8 | |
| John Mathew | 382 | 8.7 | |
| Robert Allard (withdrawn) | |||
| Ward 2 | |||
| Jacques Barbeau | 1,838 | 35.8 | |
| Terry Kett (X) | 1,730 | 33.7 | |
| Sandy Bass | 1,153 | 22.5 | |
| Stephen Butcher | 223 | 4.3 | |
| Travis Morgan | 189 | 3.7 | |
| Ward 3 | |||
| Claude Berthiaume (X) | 3,094 | 65.3 | |
| Mike Dupont | 1,167 | 24.6 | |
| Bill Hedderson | 479 | 10.1 | |
| Ward 4 | |||
| Evelyn Dutrisac | 2,663 | 63.1 | |
| Ronald Bradley (X) | 967 | 22.9 | |
| Marcel Rainville | 318 | 7.5 | |
| Robert Boileau | 275 | 6.5 | |
| Ward 5 | |||
| Ron Dupuis (X) | 2,051 | 51.5 | |
| Louise Portelance | 1,931 | 48.5 | |
| Yvan Robert (withdrawn) | |||
| Ward 6 | |||
| André Rivest (X) | 2,115 | 44.5 | |
| Robert Kirwan | 1,523 | 32.0 | |
| Henri Lagrandeur | 1,116 | 23.5 | |
| Ward 7 | |||
| Russ Thompson (X) | 2,264 | 55.6 | |
| Dave Kilgour | 1,811 | 44.4 | |
| Ward 8 | |||
| Ted Callaghan (X) | 2,765 | 70.9 | |
| Harry Will | 1,135 | 29.1 | |
| Ward 9 | |||
| Doug Craig (X) | 1,958 | 42.3 | |
| Jim Sartor | 1,497 | 32.3 | |
| John Cochrane | 787 | 17.0 | |
| Marvin Julian | 387 | 8.4 | |
| Fran Nault (withdrawn) | |||
| Ward 10 | |||
| Frances Caldarelli (X) | 2,301 | 43.5 | |
| Austin Davey | 1,737 | 32.9 | |
| Fern Cormier | 1,246 | 23.6 | |
| Ward 11 | |||
| Janet Gasparini (X) | 2,310 | 48.4 | |
| Mike Petryna | 1,381 | 29.0 | |
| Rick Villeneuve | 1,079 | 22.6 | |
| Ward 12 | |||
| Joscelyne Landry-Altmann | 1,586 | 40.1 | |
| John Caruso | 1,529 | 38.6 | |
| Derek Young | 516 | 13.0 | |
| Will Brunette | 329 | 8.3 | |
