With nomination day having now passed, the byelection race for the empty seat on Westlock County council now has four hopefuls vying for the Division 5 seat vacated by Darrell Osmond in June.
Lori Latrielle and Isaac Skuban have put their names forward to fill the position along with Mary Ashton-Groulx and David Woynorowski, who declared their intentions to run in the Sept. 17 byelection early on in the nomination process.
Osmond defeated incumbent councillor and county reeve Don Savage by one vote in the 2017 municipal election, 110 to 109, for a total of 219 votes cast in the entire division. Overall, 37.5 per cent of eligible county voters cast their ballot in that election.
Latrielle said she looks forward to the challenge and wants to be a positive force in the future of the community.
"I believe in a strong community with a strong future. I'm a doer and I like to get involved in things," she said of her reasons for running.
Latrielle is a speech and language assistant for early learning at Westlock Elementary School, where she has worked for 14 years. She is also an active volunteer with several organizations in the community, including the Friends of Tawatinaw group that entered into an operating agreement with the county to run the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Hill in 2018. She has now stepped away from that group to pursue a council seat.
While she believes recreation in the county is of vital importance, she said she knows there are a multitude of issues to tackle, along with fellow councillors, if she is elected.
"I think one of our biggest issues is our limited budget. I think it's really important that we find solutions to our problems that fit within our limited budget. We could fix all of the roads with an unlimited budget, but reality is we don't have that unlimited budget," she said.
"It's really easy for us to point out all the problems. All we hear is the negative, but the real work comes in when we have to try to find solutions that fit within our means and actually follow through with those solutions."
Another issue is the population of the county. Latrielle said she would like to see council focus on drawing in more residents to live a country lifestyle, not too far from the city. That was one of the big draws when she moved to the area with her husband 21 years ago. They have since raised a family and become involved members of the community.
"We need to draw population to our area, whether that means business or residential. When we first moved to this community, the things we were looking for were schools, where are we going to have our kids educated and are they worthwhile? We need to know what kind of medical system we've got. We need to have doctors that accept patients. We need to have things for families to do," said Latrielle.
"If we do those kinds of things, we will draw in professionals. We want the doctors who work in our area to live in our area and we want the grader drivers who work in our area to live here too."
If either Latrielle or Ashton-Groulx are elected Sept. 17, they will be only the fourth woman to sit on Westlock County council, including Lou Hall, who is the first ever female reeve of the municipality.
"I think I offer a different point of view. I'm a different demographic than the other councillors and I think that's important. I think it's super awesome that two women in the same division are choosing to run," she said.
"I am totally a team player. I've been on many, many boards and that's the only way you can make any kind of difference, is as a team. If you go in guns-a-blazing, it's not going to work."
