South Dundas voters will have plenty of decisions to make

MORRISBURG – Every seat at the South Dundas council table is being contested in the upcoming 2018 municipal election.

Deadline day was a busy day here in South Dundas with three people filing nomination documents just hours before the July 27th 2 p.m. nomination deadline.

Monday, the clerk certified all the nominations to set the official ballot.

South Dundas mayor’s race will once again be a face-off between Steven Byvelds and Evonne Delegarde.

During the last election the incumbent mayor who at that time was Byvelds was defeated by the then councillor who aimed to unseat him.

This time, Delegarde is the incumbent mayor and Byvelds returns presenting himself as the option for change aiming to get South Dundas moving forward.

Delegarde was the first mayoral candidate to announce her intentions, expressing a desire to continue to represent the community that she loves.

It briefly appeared that South Dundas would have a three-way race for mayor. Sitting councillor Marc St. Pierre was in the race for mayor but withdrew days before the deadline.

On nomination day, the two way contest for deputy mayor became a three way contest when former South Dundas councillor Jim Graham filed his nomination papers to seek election as deputy mayor. He joins sitting councillor Bill Ewing and first time municipal election candidate Kirsten Gardner in vying for that seat.

For just a couple of hours South Dundas had seven people intending to seek election to the three councillor seats available in South Dundas. Before nomination day, incumbent councillor Archie Mellan had been joined by Joyce Latulippe, Lloyd Wells, Del Jones and Michael Burton on the list of people intending to seek election as councillor.

On nomination day that list grew by two as both Richard Zandbergen and Donald W. Lewis filed papers the morning of deadline day.

A little over two hours after filing his papers Zandbergen withdrew them.

Zandbergen told The Leader that when he filed his papers there were only four people running for the seats and he wanted voters here to have more choices than that. A couple of hours later when he saw that seven people were seeking the seats, he thought that was too many so he withdrew his nomination.

While the nomination deadline closed at 2 p.m. July 27, the unofficial list of candidates did not become official until Monday, July 30 when the clerk certified the nominations to officially set the ballot.