Mayor Bob Crate Re-elected in Trent Hills

Mayor Talks about Challenges in the Next Four Years

Article by Sue Dickens/Image by John Campbell

Trent Hills - “I’m very happy. You know, I think that the reason I got re-elected was we had a good council, we did a good job,” said Mayor Bob Crate who was re-elected last night and spoke with Trent Hills Now, minutes after learning the results.

Mayor Crate added,”There wasn’t a lot of infighting and we’ve seen that in some other areas and it doesn’t go well and it’s hard on staff…so I think we’ve had a, you know, a really good last four years and I hope that going forward, we can do it again.”

Susan Fedorka, who was running against the mayor for the second time, lost by 970 votes. Voter turnout dropped to 32.2 per cent of the municipality’s 12,510 eligible voters. Four years ago voter turnout was 37.16 per cent.

The mayor won with 2,499 votes while Fedorka received 1,529.

When asked what challenges he faced in the next four years, Mayor Crate said, “There’s challenges. I mean the first challenge is a budget, we’ve got a budget coming up that is going to be hard to keep at a reasonable rate because of things that are going on with inflation and all the rest of it. So I mean that’s going to be our number one priority right off the bat. And then we’ll go from there.”

The mayor talked about the future of Trent Hills.

“We’ve got a lot of things going on with development. It’s great to see the development in Hastings, and here in Campbellford. And I mean the announcement last week of the donation of the land for the hospital. These are all things that are going to affect council and be important going forward.”

He added, “We’re going to have to look for ways to help get these things done… it’s not our purview in some cases, (i.e. the new hospital) but we’re going to be involved. So it’s going to be important as council is going to have to work with these guys.”

When asked what he sees as the biggest change in Trent Hills, over the years, as a longtime resident, and more recently, in two and a half terms as mayor, he said, “I think to me it is development. I grew up in Hastings, and you know, back then developers came along, they expected the municipality to put the water and sewers in, they built the houses, that’s what they thought was fair. We’ve since gone a long way away from that.”

He talked about the development going in behind the Bridgewater café in Hastings, along the Trent River. “That’s going to be a real little jewel right in the middle of town.”

In conclusion the mayor said, “I just want to thank everybody for their support and I look forward to getting council together and getting to work.”

The first meeting of the new council is Nov. 15.

We didn’t connect with Susan Fedorka in time for a comment last night but she provided us with one this morning.

“I would like to thank all of the residents who I met at the door that voted. I enjoyed campaigning with Bill and Emma, as unconventional as it was, it was sometimes necessary. Nice to see new faces on council and I hope that it will inspire new people to run in four years. Good luck to all”.