"I think they spoke fairly clearly the way forward is to rebuild relationships," says new Winkler Mayor

"The biggest thing I can say is I'm extremely relieved," said new City of Winkler Mayor Henry Siemens in a late night interview after the unofficial results of the municipal election were announced. "I was hoping the message would be clear, and the community wanted to reconcile and to rebuild and to move forward. I think, from what I see here, that's fairly consistent with that. Job one is going to be to move forward."

Garnering 87% of the popular vote, and 3,358 votes in total, the long-time city councillor and deputy mayor defeated the other mayoral candidate running, Karl Krebs, who received 501 votes.

"It was a fairly stressful period, and I'm just so happy right now that the number was clear, it was decisive and the community has said it's time to get back to doing what we do, and that is supporting each other and rebuilding," he added.

Siemens felt, in the weeks leading up to election night, his platform of rebuilding, repairing relationships and supporting one another was resonating with voters.

"Today, at the ballot box, they also showed the community wants to rebuild. The community wants to come back together. The community wants to move forward, and they want to do that together, and I'm so happy to see that."

Siemens made it clear during his participation in the Winkler and District Chamber of Commerce all candidates forum earlier in October relationship building and repair would be crucial for whomever was elected mayor of the city of Winkler. How will the new Head of Council approach those key things, that relationship building, mending those bridges, and once again reconnecting the community within Winkler, but also from a regional perspective?

"An awful lot of that is just going to start with reaching out and having conversations, and those are going to be conversations where I strive to hear, not strive to listen to rebut," he explained. "I want to hear what the concerns are. I want to talk about them. I want to see how we can get together, how we can move forward. When I reach out in community, or reach out outside of our community, my goal is just simply to be there and to listen, and to find out where we have differences, and then try to find a way to bridge those differences so that we can work together. I don't anticipate for even one second we're going to be fully in agreement on everything, but I believe we can disagree and still work together, and that is where I want to strive to be, and that's what I want to work on."

There are a number of significant projects on the agenda for the city which need to get done to ensure the community's ongoing ability to grow, those being increasing potable water availability and wastewater treatment.

"We have a wastewater treatment project, in some manner or fashion, we have to find a way to move forward," he said. "We also need more drinking water, and we've got some work already started on that and that will continue. We need recreational infrastructure as well, and we've been lucky to be awarded an $8 million grant for renovation of our Centennial Arena. We are hopeful that the Province of Manitoba will join us at that table, and be able to do the work that we need to do to fully refurbish that." 

Joining Siemens at the Council table are returning incumbent councillors Andrew Froese, Don Fehr, Marvin Plett and Michael Grenier, as well as newcomers Don Friesen and Peter Froese.

"I'm excited that we have a Council who all four incumbents were re-elected, so there are people we're going to be ready to hit the ground running with," stated Siemens. "They're familiar with these projects, they know the need for those projects. They know the discussion we've already had around the table. We have two new people at the table, as well, who are not unfamiliar with the City of Winkler, so that's going to be a significant help. I think, in terms of the work that needs to be done from an operational point of view, from an infrastructure rebuilding point of view, I have a really good team, and I'm excited to be able to work with them."

Siemens concluded with a thank you to the community for showing up to vote.

"I think we had very close to 50% voter turnout, the the numbers were huge," he shared. "People showed up, they cared, they invested, and I think they spoke fairly clearly that the way forward is to rebuild relationships, and we want to work very hard to do that."

You can listen to CFAM Radio 950 Morning Show Co-Host Chris Sumner's conversation with Henry Siemens, below.