Former township councillor fills Woolwich council vacancy

Julie-Anne Herteis has been chosen as the new Ward 1 councillor for the Township of Woolwich by the difference of one vote and she will be officially sworn into her new seat on March 6.

Herteis will be filling in the vacancy left by one of two councillors representing Elmira, Scott Hahn, who resigned in January due to job commitments.

Jumping into a new role suddenly may be challenging, but she is not new to the job. From 2010-2014, Herteis was the Ward 1 councillor for Woolwich, which was also the reason she applied this time when a spot opened.

"I really enjoyed my time on council last time. And I thought, well, there's only a few months left, they need someone in there that has the experience so I applied," she told CBC News.

Selection process

Herteis beat out nine other candidates. The only other candidate who received votes was Dan Holt, who ran for council in 2014 and placed third by receiving 1,036 votes.

The system used on the Feb. 27 special council meeting saw each candidate give a short presentation before the council voted. The first person to receive 50 per cent, or three votes, would get the seat.

In a previous interview with CBC News, the township's director of council and information services Val Hummel, said council decided not to hold a by-election because there's already a municipal one happening in the same year.

"The cost would have been equal to doing ... two elections in one year almost, because we still have to mail out the voter notifications and pay for the internet voting system," he said.

The goal was to fill the vacancy by March 6.

No plan to run for election yet

Anyone who lived in the township and was over 18-years-old could apply to be a councillor. Herteis's opponents included long-time and newer residents, one a former civil engineer technologist for the City of Kitchener and another a retired firefighter.

Herteis, for her daytime job, works as a contractor who offers business administration services for a number of organizations, including a plastic recycling company and a retirement home in Elmira. She also offers bookkeeping and tax preparation services.

While she's excited to represent the township again as a councillor, whether she'll run again is up in the air.

"That's still eight months away," she said.

Once she begins her role, officially starting Tuesday, it'll be a busy ride.

"It's going to be a lot of reading, a lot of catching up, a lot of talking to find out what's going on, things that I don't know," Herteis said.