BATTLEFORD - Town of Battleford held its official swearing-in ceremony for the new council Monday night, following the election on Nov. 13 and the vote recount on Dec. 11.
"It was a long day coming," Mayor Ames Leslie said of the swearing-in ceremony, following council. "We had initially planned this almost a month ago now. It's good to finally have the council-elect in place and get down to business, and try and make up for the lost month. It was an imperative time to spend on the budget, and now we are going to catch up."
Two new councillors - Mark Coleman and Clayton Lazar - are joining the elected incumbents, and Leslie who was acclaimed as mayor, for the new council, and are learning more about their duties on council to familiarize themselves.
"Unfortunately, part of the onboarding [training] piece before this meeting never happened because we had the recount," Leslie said. "So, they are going to have a compressed onboarding time because we need to get budgets done and budget approved by the turn of the calendar, or shortly thereafter. Tonight, in the last seven years, we would have been approving budget [for 2025], and we haven't even started discussing budgets yet."
He said the new councillors will be learning about the process of council on the job as a result.
"We'll definitely have some one-off discussions to onboard them, and answer some questions, and catch them up to speed on the policies and the code of ethics, and the expectations of them. But they are definitely going to learn in a compressed time than what we had hoped."
New councillor Clayton Lazar narrowly defeated incumbent David George by one vote, both in the Nov. 13 election, and the recount on Dec. 11 as requested by George because of the extremely tight race for the seat.
Following council's meeting Monday, Lazar said he was glad the recount took place.
"It just proved that our system worked," he said. "And, David was really good about it. David is a neighbour of mine, so he and I had a good chat at the initial court hearing that got adjourned. David has always been a good person and a good friend of mine, and I just want to thank him for his service, and I did that day."
