New city council to be sworn in Wednesday night

Published on November 9th, 2010
Mike Carson
Topics : Summerside city council , SUMMERSIDE


SUMMERSIDE – It’s a new look Summerside city council that will be taking the oath of office Wednesday as the official swearing in ceremony takes place in council chambers at city hall at 7 p.m.

Five new councillors will take their seats, the largest makeover of the city’s municipal body since amalgamation in 1995.

Returning councillors include Bruce MacDougall, Ron Dowling and Cory Thomas. Joining them will be five first time councillors Frank Costa, Peter Holman, Jim Steele, Jeff Sullivan and Tina Mundy.

Basil Stewart will be sworn in for an unprecedented ninth consecutive term as mayor of of Summerside, a position he has held for a quarter of a century.

One of the tasks before Stewart prior to tonight’s swearing in ceremony is deciding the appointment of committee chairman for the municipal departments and the naming of the deputy mayor.

Stewart has decided who will chair each committee and who the deputy mayor will be for the next four years, but he’s keeping that to himself until the ceremony.

“I’ve been working on that for the last week or so,” Stewart said. “I think all of them should be happy with their appointments. We have eight departments and everybody will be a chair and a co-chair (of another committee). And there will be liaison appointments to different organizations. It will be a nice evening for the councillors. One for them to remember and then it’s on with business.”

Unlike in previous years, there is little lead-time for this new council. Five days after being sworn in they will be involved in their inaugural city council meeting on Nov. 15.

In the past the new council took over in January, but under new legislation the councils take over in November.

“The swearing in will be effective for Nov. 15,” Stewart said. “That’s the new law in the City of Summerside Act. They take over on the third Monday in November which is, this year, Nov. 15.”

Stewart campaigned on the promise of lowering taxes and power rates and that he would bring this up before the new council but he wasn’t definite if it would come before council next Monday night.

“There could be a number of things on the agenda,” Stewart said. “We’ll work on that stuff this week. The packages are being prepared to make sure that they all have copies of the bylaws, the regulations, the policies. We’ll get the swearing in ceremonies process on Wednesday and then we’ll move on from there.”



SUMMERSIDE CITY COUNCIL 2010-2014

Mayor Basil Stewart

Ward 1 Bruce MacDougall

Ward 2 Frank Costa

Ward 3 Peter Holman

Ward 4 Jim Steele

Ward 5 Ron Dowling

Ward 6 Jeff Sullivan

Ward 7 Tina Mundy

Ward 8 Cory Thomas