By Mike Renzella
The Haldimand Press
HAGERSVILLE — Former mayor Marie Trainer has beaten former Ward 4 councillor Tony Dalimonte by a razor thin 34 vote margin in Monday evening’s Ward 4 by-election. Trainer will serve as councillor for the remainder of the current Council term, stepping in for Natalie Stam, who resigned from the position just four months after winning the seat in last fall’s municipal election.
According to the results, Trainer secured 675 votes to Dalimonte’s 641. In third place, Albert Marshall picked up 356 votes, while Jesse Little took fourth with 101, and James Kaspersetz came fifth with 49.
In total, 1,822 votes were recorded, down from the 2,896 votes that were cast in the ward during the 2022 Municipal Election.
Speaking the day after her win, Trainer was feeling “fantastic, fabulous. I’m so excited.”
With a full slate of orientation training ahead of her, Trainer is set to learn the various ways the County rules and regulations have changed in the time since she last served as mayor.
During the campaign, Trainer was an outspoken critic of the Minister’s Zoning Order (MZO) request related to a potential Nanticoke development. Despite the MZO vote having taken place ahead of the candidate debate on June 8, Trainer centered her opening speech on the issue.
“We can’t give up yet,” said Trainer on the divisive issue. “It’s too important to all of Haldimand. We cannot have 10,000 jobs lost and all that industrial space, tax dollars; it’s just not right. Somehow, we have to get these councillors to understand.”
Additionally, Trainer caught the public’s attention with a proposed temporary Hagersville bypass that would utilize existing roads within Ward 4 and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation to temporarily solve the decades-old issue of traffic congestion in Hagersville’s urban core. Whether staff will find the plan feasible remains to be seen until Trainer brings it forward in Council, but Dalimonte was adamant during the campaign that the County cannot legally influence the flow of traffic without the involvement of the Ministry of Transportation, which has dodged the idea for years.
“I can’t put it forward until I know I have four votes secured, otherwise it will be shot down and you can’t bring it up again until the next term of Council,” said Trainer on her temporary bypass proposal. “It would solve a lot of issues for the time being until the Province gets their act together.”
Speaking with the other candidates following the election, Dalimonte said he was “extremely disappointed” with his second-place result. He stated, “We thought our chances of winning were very good. We fought a good, clean, hard campaign with a message I took door-to-door of moving the county in a forward direction.”
Dalimonte believed that by accentuating the projects he did in the past and those like the Active Living Centre that he is currently working on, he could persuade voters to let him continue on with his work.
“Unfortunately, I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” said Dalimonte, who didn’t rule out another campaign down the road, but also didn’t commit to running again. “It’s frustrating, that’s for sure.”
He concluded, “It’s been an honour and a pleasure to have served the good people of this ward. I would like to think as of today I’ve left it in a much better place, with positive things to come like the Active Living Centre. I’m very proud of my record and I think it stands for itself.”
Third place finisher Albert Marshall kept his remarks short, noting, “Congratulations to Marie. I enjoyed engaging voters on issues.”
Jesse Little thanked his supporters, stating, “Obviously, we’d like to have more involvement, but for a by-election I think it was a pretty good turnout.”
Despite losing, Little said the by-election helped him grow as a person, and expressed appreciation that the by-election happened at all, rather than Council appointing someone to the role: “I think that was more fair to the public.”
He shared his hopes for Trainer: “I hope she stands up for the people as she advertised and campaigned. That’s all the people want, to be represented. It shows with this by-election that they weren’t happy with the previous representation, myself included.”
Little said he will run again if “timing and life” work out, adding, “It was a good experience, and I don’t plan on going away…. I encourage everyone to participate in our local municipality. That goes beyond a vote. Our opinions and our voice matters.”
James Kaspersetz was less enthusiastic about the results, stating, “People will look back at these four or five years down the road and ask ‘what happened’…. There’s nothing we can do about the MZO, it’s out of our hands, but the message being pushed was that there was still hope.”
He added, “Council is very dysfunctional. It was dysfunctional from the get-go.… Between the four existing councillors, they will decide the fate of Haldimand County. The mayor won’t have a voice, and Marie won’t have a voice.”
Trainer is officially set to be sworn in at a Council meeting on Monday, June 26, where she will immediately face a big Ward 4 issue.
“They’re going to discuss the new Active Living Centre on Monday. They want to make some decisions already and I haven’t had much time to review it,” she said, adding that County staff planned to get a copy of what they’re proposing over to her shortly. “I’ll have to look over it very seriously over the weekend.”
Trainer concluded with a word to her fellow candidates: “I wish them well in whatever their future endeavours are.”
