Maryfield residents vote against joining RM
November 18, 2020, 3:21 pm
Rob Paul
Municipal election day for the Village of Maryfield was more than that this year.
On top of voting for mayor and council, there was a referendum regarding whether or not the village should join the RM of Maryfield.
The referendum had one question, “are you in favour of restructuring the Village of Maryfield to become part of the RM of Maryfield No. 91?” With a yes or no below on the ballot.
In the end, 129 resident of Maryfield voted against restructuring the government to join the RM with 29 voting for it.
This has been a long process that began over five months ago and a decision had to be made before the end of the year.
“It came about on June 30 and it was presented to council after the long weekend,” said Maryfield Administrator Denine Neufeld. “Of course, according to legislation, because it was presented before July 1 it had to be dealt with before the end of the year.
“It was then presented to the Maryfield council after the long weekend in July and the administrator—myself—had 30 days to deem that petition sufficient or non-sufficient. I deemed it sufficient on July 29. Council then decided the referendum vote will be the day of the election.”
Newly elected Maryfield mayor, Scott Eklund, is pleased with the result from the referendum and he believes the village didn’t need to join the RM to continue moving forward.
“The town is still viable and it can function on its own,” said Eklund. “There’s obviously some people in town that had concerns about the direction the town was heading so we’ve just got to focus on being more fiscally responsible and making sure people know what’s going on.”
As the new mayor, Eklund is hoping to provide residents with a more open dialogue and new ideas to help Maryfield grow and ensure residents don’t think they need to join the RM to sustain the community.
“We’ve got basically a whole new council so there will be a learning curve, but I think we’re going to have some new ideas and some new though processes that will provide some guidance toward moving in a more progressive direction,” he said. “It’s good to know that people have faith in you and see the potential of the ideas that you have.
“I’m looking forward to working with the new council and we also have a new administrator that just started.
“There’s going to be some growing pains, but I think we have some pretty motivated and hardworking people on council coming in.
“The learning curve will be steep, but I think we’ll get past it fast.”
