It was an exciting and perhaps even a surprising election night for David Gillan and his supporters Monday.
“It was fantastic — (I’m) still trying to let it sink in a little bit,” said Gillan to the News-Optimist on the morning after he won the mayor’s race, defeating incumbent Ryan Bater and three other candidates.
Gillan watched the results come in at the Blend restaurant, where he and a small group of supporters erupted into pandemonium once it became clear he had won.
“The phone’s been ringing ever since,” said Gillan.
Since then, it has been a whirlwind of phone calls and interviews for the new mayor as he prepared to take over Nov. 16.
The media interviews have included ones from Saskatoon and Regina.
“Whenever an incumbent’s defeated, there’s interest — more interest,” Gillan said.
One situation Gillan does not have to worry about is the prospect of the runner-up in North Battleford refusing to concede or claiming election fraud — unlike a certain election to the south.
Among the phone calls Gillan received on election night was from Mayor Bater, who offered his congratulations. Bater has said he has offered Gillan any assistance in the transition. Gillan called it an “excellent” and “very professional” call.
Gillan moves to the mayor’s role after three years at the Town of Battleford as their director of finance and deputy CAO. He recently resigned that position to seek the mayor’s job in North Battleford, but that job still has about a month left to go as the town recruits to fill the finance position.
Gillan said the posting for his old job had closed the previous week and they are looking to interview people. He says he is looking to leave the town in a good position before he departs, but in the meantime he expects to be showing up at Battleford council meetings for about the next month.
“I’m going to have to straddle both sides of the river for a while,” Gillan said, but “it won’t be too long.” He expects his Battleford job will be wrapped up by Christmas.
The transition period at City Hall is an unusually short one compared to previous elections, due to the municipal elections being pushed back to Nov. 9 to accommodate the provincial election in October.
Gillan and the new council were set to be sworn in at their ceremonial first meeting on Nov. 16, just a week after the municipal vote, and then their first meeting with real business on the agenda is scheduled for Nov. 23.
Gillan expects there will be no time to waste.
“It’s budget time, and right after that we need to start getting into the detail and get to work,” said Gillan.
The budget will be the most immediate and pressing priority for the new mayor, he indicated.
Having said that, Gillan said “we’re not going to rush a budget, we’re all going to dig into the issues and all be comfortable to vote on it. If it takes extra time, it’ll take extra time. This is an important document, it’s something that can’t be rushed.”
Gillan does say he does want a budget in place “expeditiously,” so that tenders can go out.
In the meantime, Gillan plans to reach out to the council winners and get to know them better. He knows most of them very well already, but in particular wanted to reach out to Bill Ironstand, one of the two winning new councillors. Gillan already knows Ross MacAngus from his own time at the city and town.
The new mayor does not expect that the new council will need a lot of orientation training for their roles.
“We’ve got four incumbents and myself, we know how to do this really well,” said Gillan. “Newly-elected Ross MacAngus is familiar with the city from working there. So we can all hit the ground in a reasonably efficient way.”
