City council is complete once more, now that byelection results have been counted.
Ted Greves was the voters' choice with 1,606 of the 6,323 ballots cast on Saturday, and he's "delighted" with the outcome.
"I've been working at this since the last election and I didn't really want to lose this one," said the retired firefighter, who also ran for council in Nanaimo's last municipal election. "We had the right strategy. We started out first and had our signs up first."
Brian Fillmore placed second with 1,276 votes and Darcy Olsen was third with 1,008. Bill McKay finished with 877 votes; Ian Gartshore, 851 and Murray McNab, 705. With 62,690 registered voters in Nanaimo, voter turnout was 10.1 per cent.
"We had excellent candidates. We had a good cross-section. We had, I guess you'd call it, labour, business," Greves said. "I would like to think that I'm a little left of centre but I'm more of the happy medium."
Coun. Jim Kipp and Coun. Fred Pattje were first to call Greves with their congratulations but the new councillor is looking forward to working with the entire team, so to speak.
"I've been on a few executive boards and I've been on a lot of teams – sports teams, especially – and that's the way I like to work, I really do," Greves said.
Now that he's earned the job, the work starts. He said he hopes to "hit the ground running" but never having served on council, he can't be certain as to what awaits him.
"I'm just going to have to feel my way. I'm not so arrogant to think that I'm going to make the difference," Greves said.
Speaking to voters on the campaign trail, he noticed that although they all suggested taxes were too high, they preferred to express concerns over neighbourhood issues such as highrises, low-barrier housing and cellular towers.
Once he's officially sworn in, Greves will have an important say in those sorts of issues, and whatever else comes to the table – there will once again be an odd number of votes on city council.
"I do make informed decisions and I'll be making them for the benefit of the whole city," Greves said. "We'll see what the future holds."
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