A look back at the history of Tri-City elections
Posted Jan 29, 2014 05:08:41 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The tri-city and its surrounding townships have some interesting council history.
For example, J.E. Hett was the first mayor of Kitchener in 1916, and Bette Swartz was the first woman elected to council in 1963.
Here’s a few more “firsts” found on the City of Kitchener’s webpage:
-The first televised council meeting in the new council chamber (current city hall) took place on September 27, 1993.
-The first webcasting of a council meeting took place on August 12, 2013.
-The first recount in Kitchener’s history occurred in 2010 for Ward 9.
Some have been in office for over 20 years, such as these councillors:
Dominic Cardillo – 1963-1982; 1983-1994 (Mayor)
Geoff Lorentz – 1989-2010
C. Siebert – 1932; 1937-38; 1940-45; 1947-56; 1961
John Smola – 1984 (Apr. 30) – 2010
Henry Sturm – 1924-26; 1928; 1930-32, 1933-34 (Mayor); 1936-42; 1944-53
Jim Ziegler – 1981-2002
There were significant changes for council in the 2000’s. Council decreased to a mayor and six councillors in 2000, but in 2010 the number of councillors was increased to 10, to correspond with the increase in the number of wards. And in 2006 the four-year term council was implemented.
The year of 1978 was the first year a computerized election system was used when the Votomatic Vote Recorder system was used at an approximate cost of $61,500. US. But it was 2010 again that saw the use of decentralized electronic tabulators complete with memory cards at the polling stations.
Director of corporate communications and marketing for the City of Cambridge, Linda Fegan, shared with 570News some facts about Cambridge. She noted the first female councillor was Margaret Secord, who served on the 1922 GaIt City Council. Irene Heise was Preston’s first female councillor serving from 1947 to 1949, while Hespeler did not have female councillors. The city’s first female mayor was Claudette Millar who served as Mayor of Preston between 1970 to 1972, and as Mayor of Cambridge 1973 to 1974, and between 1979 to 1988. As for a non-council related tidbit, Fegan added the inventors of IMAX–Graeme Ferguson, Bob Kerr and Bill Shaw–were all high school classmates in Cambridge.
Archivist for the City of Waterloo, Charlotte Woodsley told 570News, ” the first regional chair was directly elected 1997, and prior to that they were elected by council.” She also mentioned that regional council is different than municipality in that they used to be elected as part of a different process. But effective December 1, 2000, the regional council became a separate council.
“So the first full direct election for regional council was December ,1 2000, and only the mayors continued to sit on both regional and municipal council,” Woodsley said. “The region doesn’t open polls its the cities and townships that open the polls and prepare the ballots and then provide the results to the region.”
Woodsley noted that Ken Seiling is longest serving regional chair–serving since 1985–and has been member of regional council since 1978 when he was first elected mayor of Woolwich.
And on a final note, in 2010 the region “was the first to hold a vote on fluoride under the Municipal Elections Act rather than the Fluoride Act.”
The vote for that came close with 15,461 against 15,266.
