Greg Dionne elected to third term as Prince Albert mayor

Greg Dionne has been re-elected as mayor of Prince Albert with 3,322 votes.

The runner up was former Sask. Party MLA Darryl Hickie, who received 3,077 votes.

This will be Dionne's third term since he took office in 2012. He won by more than 1,600 votes in the 2016 municipal election, with 4,450 votes out of 10,233 counted.

Dionne said Monday night that he was feeling pretty good and wanted to thank all of his supporters.

"I did get a clear message that they want me to deal with drugs, gangs and guns," Dionne said.

He said economic development is one of the other main things he wants to focus on over the next four years.

"That's coming through with the two new rinks that we're building, the aquatic centre, the new hospital, the university, possibly the new French school," Dionne said. "I think we're positioned pretty good to come over the COVID-19."

Dionne said when it comes to voter turnout tonight, he is considering the fact that there was "a foot or two of snow on the ground".

"Unfortunately in our case since the provincial election was so close to us we couldn't get workers," Dionne said. "Most of our workers are seniors, [and] because of COVID-19 they didn't want to come to work."

He said that made it difficult for them to consider delaying the election "two or three more days" due to the storm.

The city was offering free transit for the election, but all transit was cancelled due to the snowstorm, Dionne said this negatively impacted the voter turnout.

Hickie said his campaign and Dionne's campaign had some stark differences.

"At the end of the day the votes that came in were votes that wanted one candidate over the other and I'm just proud people came out to vote," Hickie said. "I've always said people have given their lives for us to have democracy and this right to vote."

Hickie said he accepts the results.

"We'll move forward and just go back to being a retired police office," Hickie said.

He said he does not think the snow storm had anything to do with the result.

"It was equal for all four candidates, I think given that we had five days I believe of advanced polling the electorates saw and had a chance to go vote for numerous days," Hickie said. "It is what it is and you move on from this."

City council winners

Other winners in the city include Charlene Miller, the incumbent councillor for Ward 1, Terra Lennox-Zepp, who was re-elected for Ward 2, Tony Head, who won over incumbent Evert Botha for Ward 3, and Don Cody, the incumbent councillor for Ward 4.

Dennis Ogrodnick was re-elected for Ward 5, Blake Edwards was re-elected for Ward 6 and Dawn Kilmer won for Ward 7 after Dennis Nowoselsky gave up his seat to run for Mayor. Ted Zurakowski was acclaimed in Ward 8.

The five seats for public school board went to Arne Lindberg, Alan Nunn, Michelle Vickers, Barry Hollick and Grant Gustafson.

The six seats for separate school board went to Suzanne Stubbs, Andrea Ring, Patrick Hordyski, Chrissy Halliday, Albert Provost and Darryl Sande.