The Village of Clyde confirmed Matthew White has been elected to council by acclamation.
Only White’s nomination form was received at the village office on Nomination Day Dec. 12 and as a result he will officially be sworn in when he takes his Oath of Office at the Dec. 20 village council meeting.
“I’m really looking forward to getting out and meeting a lot more people in the village,” White said.
“I’ve met quite a few people so far — I’ve volunteered at a couple of things — but my goal over the next few months is to try and meet everyone in the community, and hear their concerns, and try to see if we can fix those.”
The village office confirmed that the result is official and acting chief administrative officer Kim Hale noted that if they had received any other nominations, there would be a 24-hour waiting period.
“I was actually at the village office (when) they told me that I was the only one that had put my name in,” White said.
“I was a little disappointed at that, but it’s nice that I can now be on council and help people out.”
White replaces Don Domingue, who resigned from council in an Oct. 17 letter, stating he could no longer continue his duties because of health concerns.
The man who is taking his seat as Clyde’s newest councillor is a newcomer to the area. Originally from New Brunswick, White moved to the community with his partner last May.
His decade-long career as a Canadian Armed Forces military policeman brought him all across Canada. Eventually he landed in Edmonton and was looking to settle there, but instead he decided to go back to his small-town roots.
“We had been looking in the city but it just didn’t feel right to me, so we started looking on the outskirts and we found a good home in Clyde,” he said.
“We really liked the people that we met, we liked the area, we liked how quiet it was, and that’s where we decided to buy.”
Around that same time, the village was undergoing a viability review by Municipal Affairs, which would determine whether Clyde would remain a village or dissolve and become a hamlet within Westlock County.
“I read through that and saw some of the issues that people had expressed in the viability review, and I just figured that I share some of those same concerns as a citizen of Clyde, and there’s no better way to help change it than actually run for council,” he said.
“The biggest one for me was the lack of communication between council and the rest of the community. I consider myself a people person and I like to get out and talk to the community, so that’s one of my goals now that I’ve been elected is to make sure that the community — their voice — is heard on council.”
