Hilda MacDonald has been on council for 12 years — the past four as deputy mayor
The Town of Leamington has a new mayor.
Current deputy mayor Hilda MacDonald unseated two-term incumbent John Paterson winning by nearly 2,000 votes.
MacDonald has been on council for 12 years — the past four as deputy mayor.
She says it was time for change.
"It was verified by all the days that I worked in my office. The people said we're not being listened to. I think we've got lots of really smart people in this community. People are willing to come to the table because I've already asked them, "Should I get in, are you willing to help problem solve?"
MacDonald says re-connecting with the community will be a major priority.
"We did something really great things, but we lost that connection to the people. Once you lose that, then the whole point of being elected officials is done. So I'm going back to having that connection with the residents in the community."
She says she'll be getting to work on the uptown core right away.
"I'm talking raising the standard, raising the bar of what we feel is acceptable, what we want our public works to do, what we want our bylaw officers to do, what we want in signage. It's not costing the taxpayers a ton of money, but it's key and I think you'll see that fairly quickly."
Bruce Medcalf was a distant third in the town's mayoral race.
Current councillor Larry Verbeke is Leamington's new deputy mayor defeating Dharmesh Patel by more than 3,200 votes.
Bill Dunn, John Hammond, John Jacobs and Tim Wilkinson are returning to the council table — newcomer Paul Tiessen will be the fifth member.
Unofficial ResultsMAYOR:
Hilda MacDonald (ELECTED) Votes: 4341Bruce Medcalf Votes: - 333John Paterson (incumbent) Votes: 2533
DEPUTY MAYOR:
Dharmesh Patel Votes: 1793Larry Verbeke (ELECTED) Votes: 5081
CITY COUNCIL:
Bill Dunn (incumbent) (ELECTED) Votes: 3891Derek Friesen Votes: 1621Donald W. Haggith Votes: 448John Hammond (incumbent) (ELECTED) Votes: 3780John Jacobs (incumbent) (ELECTED) Votes: 2992Trevor Jones Votes: 2582Heather Latam Votes: 2555Marlon Ordonez Votes: 252Oscar Ramirez Votes: 510Brian Scott Votes: 1256Mark Simpson Votes: 1253Kyle Sousa Votes: 1241Paul Tiessen (ELECTED) Votes: 3831Tim Wilkinson (incumbent) (ELECTED) Votes: 3766