The race for the three seats representing the Squamish area on the Board of School Trustees for School District 48 resulted in the dethroning of the board chair and a significant victory for former school principal Rick Price.
The Howe Sound School District chairperson, Doug Hackett, was voted off the board Saturday (Nov. 19) in a decisive defeat.
Former Squamish councilor Lyle Fenton took the Squamish Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) Area D trustee position with 49 votes, well above the 29 votes cast for Hackett. And both candidates expressed dismay that the voter turnout was no more than 78.
Hackett offered congratulations to Fenton in an interview with the Chief and also had words of regret.
"I will probably miss it a bit, it's been very exciting," he said.
Fenton said he's pleased to have been elected and knows he has a learning curve ahead of him. He also spoke of teamwork, but approached the concept in a broader sense than Hackett did.
"I'm hoping that it would more of a team throughout the whole system rather than just a board of trustees delivering stuff to those working within the system," said Fenton.
Rick Price topped the polls in the five-person race for Squamish's two trustee spots, with 2,786 votes (38.5 per cent)."I ran once and I lost, now I've run once and won - feels a lot better, let me tell you," said Price.
Price finished in third place in the 2002 election behind Constance Rulka and Amy Shoup. Rulka did not seek re-election and Shoup resigned her seat on Sept. 15. She said at that time that she was stepping down to pursue other professional activities.
Andrea Beaubien will occupy the other seat on the Board of Trustees representing Squamish. She received 1,677 votes (23.2 per cent), Terrill Patterson finished third with 1,017 votes, followed by Michele Mulholland (945) and Kerry Wallace (815).
