REGINA - The newly elected Regina Mayor Chad Bachynski and his new council will officially be sworn in at a special council meeting Monday night.
The special meeting will take place at City Hall and begins at 7 o’clock. On the agenda for that meeting will be the swearing-in ceremony followed by the receive and file of the report of the official declaration of results for the municipal elections.
Bachynski won last Wednesday’s election with just over 31 per cent of the vote, bringing an end to the four years in office of Mayor Sandra Masters.
When he is sworn in the 38-year-old Bachynski will be one of the youngest mayors in Regina history, the youngest being Francis Nicholson Darke (1863-1940) who was mayor at 35 years old.
Also being sworn Monday night will be the ten city councillors, eight of whom are brand new. Being sworn in tonight to the new council are the following:
Ward 1: Dan Rashovich, Ward 2: George Tsiklis, Ward 3: David Froh, Ward 4: Mark Burton, Ward 5: Sarah Turnbull, Ward 6: Victoria Flores, Ward 7: Shobna Radons, Ward 8: Shanon Zachidniak, Ward 9: Jason Mancinelli, and Ward 10: Clark Bezo.
Only Zachidniak and Mancinelli are incumbents. For the rest, it will be a steep learning curve and that learning will start immediately.
Last Thursday, City Clerk Jim Nicol told reporters that a full orientation will be happening for council members over the next couple of weeks, starting Tuesday. He said it will consist of two segments.
The first week “is going to focus on governance and procedural matters, so that they understand their roles, their legal authorities, et cetera, et cetera, and as well as understanding that when they get into the chambers in a formal setting, this is how things operate, this is how they do things, this is how things get done.”
The second week “largely reverts to the city manager's office to provide much more of the administrative, financial details of what goes on. So there will be sessions on the budget, how does the budget get prepared, what are the component parts of the budget? You know, do people understand that there's operations, there's capital, that the utility operates separately? We have to give them a sense of that.”
As well, each of the respective deputy city managers will outline particular programs and services that they each are responsible for.
“So it's going to be three or four days the second week of some heavy lifting, and what we're attempting to do is to provide them with this information at a really high level. The last thing we want to do is just bombard them with information.”
The other thing they will bedoing is bringing the new councillors in so they are familiar with City Hall, find out where their stand-down offices are on the 15th floor, and find out where their mailboxes are and the committee rooms. Nicol said the councillors will also will be provided with security cards, parking passes, and so on.
One thing Nicol did confirm is that budget deliberations will not happen in December as they usually have. The indication from administration is they will propose to have that happen in the third week of March.
“My expectation is late January, early February would be when administration releases the budget package for debate in March,” Nicol said.
