As well as a new mayor, Simon Yu, Prince George has three new faces on city council. City council incumbents Garth Frizzell, Cori Ramsay, Kyle Sampson, Susan Scott and Brian Skakun will be joined by Tim Bennett, Ron Polillo and Trudy Klassen.
Bennett and Polillo previously served as School District No. 57 (SD57) board trustees before running for a seat on city council.
“I am incredibly humbled with the support I have from the community. It has been an absolute honour to serve the community for the last 11 years as a trustee,” said Bennett, who was elected with 5,295 preliminary votes, coming in seventh place.
He said it’s been no secret that the last few years have been a challenge for SD57 but he can’t wait to get to work on behalf of the community as a city councillor.
“For me, it was important that I ran on a pillar of accountability and over the last few years there has been decisions made by the school district that weren’t necessarily decisions that the community always agreed with and it is important that I was held accountable for those,” explained Bennett, adding that he applied as much clarity in his campaign towards his positions that he could.
“I am thankful to that the community put their trust in me to represent them for the next four years.”
Bennett said there’s a lot of work ahead for the new city council and he is looking forward to working with the new mayor and council at creating change for Prince George.
“We have multiple ongoing crisis right now as a community we need to look to address and we heard loud and clear that there’s an expectation that we get to work right away and I cant wait for the opportunity to be able to do that.”
Polillo said he was elated and humbled to be elected.
“I felt good during the campaign and I am really pleased with the positivity and the response I was getting during the campaign translated into votes. I am looking forward to the next four years,” said Polillo who was voted in fifth place with 5,685 votes.
Polillo said he thinks he can bring over his experience with governance and budget from serving on the school board.
“Bringing that knowledge and experience will help me greatly but obviously will be an entirely different challenge and issues that we will be tacking. I think I am well positioned to really role up my sleeves dig in and make a difference.”
Polillo said he wants to focus on social issued downtown, capital infrastructure and getting a handle on over budget capital projects.
“I am really exited to work on the branding project that has been started by the City of Prince George and really developing an action plan for truth and reconciliation that is a priority as well.”
Former Citizen columnist and business owner Trudy Klassen was elected in sixth place with 5,515 votes.
“I am somewhat surprised I thought there would be more energy for new candidates and new faces at the table but here we are,” said Klassen, in reference to the five incumbents who were re-elected.
“We have a new mayor, so I am looking forward to a lot of energy from the mayor’s chair and just a lot of working together to begin to work on some of the issues facing Prince George and the very serious issues we have downtown.”
She said she wants to focus on getting city hall to be a place that is a great service to the community with better permitting times and sense of a can-do attitude that will help local businesses expand and grow.
“I hope that this is the beginning of realizing Prince George’s potential as B.C.’s northern capital. A fresh beginning.”
