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St. Lazare's new mayor gets down to business
New school issue at top of agenda
Alycia Ambroziak
The Gazette
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Mayor-elect Pierre Kary outside St. Lazare city hall. (JOHN MAHONEY/The Gazette)
It doesn’t take long for reality to set in.
Pierre Kary may have been a political newcomer when he decided to run for mayor of St. Lazare but now that he actually has the job, he lost no time in talking priorities Monday morning, barely half a day after his electoral win.
“We will start by tackling the issues. And in St. Lazare, everything has been an issue,” Kary said Monday, in between answering literally hundreds of congratulatory phone calls.
Indeed, Kary isn’t exaggerating; squabbles over issues like residential and commercial development, schools, public transportation, speed bumps, stop signs, speeding, zoning and the environment have often been the norm rather than the exception at St. Lazare city hall.
“All the dossiers we raised during the campaign, we now have to deal with,” Kary said. “There is challenge in the tasks ahead.”
Kary won the mayor’s job Sunday night with 2,386 votes, compared with 1,992 votes for nearest rival Michel St. Louis and 1,166 votes for outgoing mayor Paul Carzoli.
When he will be sworn in later this week, Kary will become the 27th mayor of the town that dates back to 1875.
The next council meeting, Kary’s first as mayor, will take place Nov. 17, at 8 p.m.
Kary reiterated his promise on election night to tackle one of the most contentious issues in the town of almost 18,000 residents: finding land for a much-needed new English elementary school.
Months of wrangling between the Lester B. Pearson school board and St. Lazare officials as well as with neighbouring towns including Vaudreuil-Dorion ended up in delaying the $8.4-million project indefinitely.
Detractors implied that language might have been a factor in the indecision or that the towns offered only parcels of land they couldn’t get rid of otherwise.
“Now, we have to get back on track,” Kary said.
For his part, Carzoli said he did something Monday he hadn’t done in a long time.
“I’m feeling surprisingly good. I slept in,” Carzoli said.
He said he was OK with the results of Sunday’s election.
“People wanted change and that’s democracy,” he said.
Carzoli said Kary will have his work cut out for him as the new mayor, trying to please the diverse demands from the population, including the equestrian community – with whom he had issues when council proposed a bylaw that could have limited the rights of some residents to own horses – environmental lobbyists and more.
“You are never going to please all the population in St. Lazare, no matter what you do,” he said.
Following Sunday’s vote, St. Louis, a former councillor, said he planned to retire from politics.