Fruitvale’s new mayor already has his priorities lined up. Stephen Morissette served the last term as a councillor and beat incumbent Patricia Cecchini with over 74 per cent of the vote. He says the budget will be a big priority going forward.
“Our first thing is this current year we raised the taxes quite a large amount and people were unhappy about that and I think they’d like to see a little more fiscal responsibility so the first thing we’re going to do is start work on next year’s budget.”
Morissette says the tax increase was to help build reserves and he also wants to find outside-the-box ways to generate funds.
Another priority he lists is improving communication.
“We’d like to bring more people in. None of us is as smart as all of us, so the more people we can get involved, the better. We seem to have really engaged the young people this election and I’d really like to keep that going.”
Morissette says he’s also looking forward to working with the new council, which includes newcomers Vicki Kilpatrick and Lindsay Kenny, incumbent Bert Kniss, and Bill Wennman who served prior to 2014.
“I think we’ve got a good mix of people young and older and from different walks of life and I think it will give four different perspectives on the village and where we should go so it should make for some good, positive discussion at council meetings.”
He’ll be sworn in on November 5 and then the first meeting is November 6.
