Sparks fly at final Peachland meeting

PEACHLAND — A hug and appeals for civil discourse gave way at Peachland’s last council meeting to angry outbursts and threats of lawsuits.

Emotions were close to the surface in advance of today’s judicial recount of the deadlocked race for mayor. Provincial court judge Ellen Burdett will be in Peachland at the community centre to do a count by hand of all votes cast for mayor in last Saturday’s municipal election.

The current tally is 804 votes for incumbent Cindy Fortin and top challenger Harry Gough. Three other mayoral candidates split 734 votes.

If Burdett determines there is a tie between Gough and Fortin, she will draw the winner’s name from a hat.

The as-yet unknown outcome of the election produced a few testy moments at last Tuesday’s council meeting, the final gathering of the current council under Fortin’s leadership.

Fortin referred to the possibility it may have been her last meeting as mayor, and expressed congratulations to those council members who won re-election.

“We don’t know who’ll be sitting in this chair, but whoever it is sitting here, they’re lucky to have you,” Fortin told the re-elected councillors. All who ran for council, Fortin said, did so because of their “love for Peachland”.

Coun. Keith Thom, who was one of the four people trying to defeat Fortin, said the new council will have to engage in “healing” community divisions.

Instead of assailing one another on social media, Thom said, townsfolk should realize those with different opinions are “not bad people but simply fellow Peachlanders with opposing viewpoints”.

Thom then went over to give Fortin a hug. Fortin praised Thom for his “genuine heart”.

The climate of civility quickly ended, however, when a person in the gallery rose during the public question period and raised concerns about the way the vote-counting was conducted.

“There was no (vote-counting) machine jam,” Brock Lucier said, scoffing at the explanation given by elections officials as to why one of the votes for Fortin was not properly counted by the electronic tabulator but showed up later during a vote verification process.

Fortin responded: “You better be careful because whatever you say may be liable and defamatory. Make sure you have your facts before you make accusations.”

Fortin asked Lucier if he’d heard what she’d said, and he responded: “Of course I did. Do I look like I’m deaf?”

Another person in the gallery who appeared to want to address council did not get the chance when the meeting was adjourned.