Peter Chirico will be the new mayor of North Bay.
The unofficial election results show Chirico garnered 7,579 votes, 724 more votes than Johanne Brousseau.
The Chamber president secured 49 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent for Brousseau, the current councillor.
Leslie McVeety secured seven percent of the vote with over 1,100 votes.
“I’m just very proud to be mayor-elect,” Chirico said at city hall Monday night.
He says the first order of business has yet to be decided, but there’s important work to do.
“Restoring trust, restoring transparency, restoring openness to this building, to this council,” Chirico says. “We’re going to work really hard on that. I think we’ve got some really dedicated councillors that are going to be there, both the incumbents and the new ones.”
Six of the ten councillors are newcomers, with four incumbents returned.
Maggie Horsfield finished first followed by fellow newcomers Lana Mitchell and Justine Mallah.
Chris Mayne is the top incumbent followed by Mark King then newcomer Sara Inch and incumbent Tanya Vrebosch.
Jamie Lowery is eighth followed by Gary Gardiner and Mac Bain.
Chirico says the public wanted change and got it with the results.
“I think that’s evident in the pretty-much sweep and the push-out,” he says.
The mayor-elect also says with the mix of new and incumbent, along with five women and five men, it’s now up to them to harness that energy.
“I think that I have the leadership abilities to do that, we can do that as a council, we can bring this city to a much better place,” he says.
Brousseau, meantime, is proud of her campaign, her volunteers and her supporters.
“North Bay is a great city and I still love it and I will always love it and will, in my own way, still be a community volunteer,” she says.
As for what’s next, Brousseau says she’ll break out the hobbies and novels again and spend time with her family.
