It was a party-like atmosphere in a packed ballroom at Tsawwassen Springs as Mayor George Harvie and his Achieving for Delta team rolled to a big election night victory.
Harvie was all-smiles as he told the enthusiastic crowd the overwhelming victory can be directly attributed to their dedicated, hard-working staff.
Proudly making note that council for the first time in its history has two people of South Asian decent, Harvie said the demographics of Delta are changing, and so is council.
Also saying he’ll continue to work hard to ensure Delta is a fair and inclusive community for everyone, Harvie noted North and South Delta must be united.
He also went over a few of his campaign promises such as encouraging more housing types, replacing the tracks and Delta and Seaquam secondary schools and building a second artificial turf field at Mackie Park.
The Optimist will have an extensive interview with Harvie online and in print next week.
With 32 of 32 polls reporting in around 10:20 p.m., Harvie had 17,050 votes, Peter van der Velden 3,751 votes and Joginder Randhawa 1,341 votes.
Harvie will have his full team at his side on council as all six of his Achieving for Delta candidates were elected.
Incumbent Alicia Guichon topped the polls again with 16,533 votes, followed by incumbent Dylan Kruger with 14,242 votes.
New to council are Daniel Boisvert with 14,130 votes, Jennifer Johal with 12,788 votes, Rod Binder with 12,626 votes and Jessie Dosanjh with 12,582 votes.
It was also a big night for Achieving for Delta for school board as they won six of the seven seats.
Topping the polls was incumbent Erica Beard with 13,677 votes followed by incumbent Val Windsor with 13,500 votes.
New to school board are Ammen Dhillon with 11,769 votes, Masako Gooch with 10,748 votes, Nimmi Daula with 10,699 votes and Joe Muego with 9,983 votes.
The final school board seat went to incumbent Nick Kanakos with 8,927 votes.
Kanakos ran with incumbent Bruce Reid under the Independents Working for You banner.
Here are the rest of the results:
Council:
Brian Read - 5,772 votes
Maha Balakumar - 5,005 votes
Pamela Swanigan - 4,778 votes
Moneca Kolvyn - 4,387 votes
Duncan Callander - 3,812 votes
Julien Jacques - 3,340 votes
Stephan Sun - 3,248 votes
School board
Maury Kask - 8,774 votes
Bruce Reid - 7,955 votes
Andrea DeWolff - 6,746 votes
Whitney Saip Dyck - 6,283 votes
Carmen Halpenny - 4,772 votes
Alisa Horth - 4,530 votes
Nuno Antunes - 3,975 votes
Daniel Toth - 3,597 votes.
Voter turnout was 29.91 per cent as 22,655 of 75,739 registered voters cast a ballot.
This is way down from 2018 when 43 per cent was the voter turnout in the municipal election.
-with files and photos from Sandor Gyarmati
