West Vancouver residents will go to the polls on April 5 to elect a new school board trustee after former trustee Lynne Block resigned to take her seat in the B.C. Legislature.
Block was elected as West Vancouver-Capilano new B.C. Conservative MLA on Oct. 19 and she resigned from the West Vancouver Schools board of education a month later.
Under the School Act, school boards must fill any vacated seats unless the seat became vacant after Jan. 1 in a general election year. The next local government and school board general elections are due in 2026, meaning the person elected as trustee will have just under two years in office.
District of West Vancouver council members met for a special meeting Thursday morning to appoint the district’s senior manager of legislative services Hope Dallas as chief election officer and schedule the election for April 5.
The legislation states that the election must be held on a Saturday within 80 days of the election officer’s appointment. Hope told council they were choosing April 5 so as to not have the vote fall on March break when many families may be out of town.
District staff are estimating the byelection will cost $75,000 to $80,000, which legislation requires the school board to reimburse to the municipality out of its own budget.
“All efforts are being made to keep costs down for the school district, for example, by using in-house staff, not using voting machines, and limiting the voting locations,” said West Vancouver spokesperson Carrie Gadsby in a statement.
The nomination period opens on Tuesday, Feb. 18 and closes at 4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 28.
The base salary for a School District No. 45 trustee is $27,101 per year.
Nomination packages are available at municipal hall or at westvancouver.ca/election.
Voter turnout for school board byelections tends to be paltry. When the North Vancouver School District held a byelection in 2021 to fill a vacant seat, five candidates ran but only 2.04 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot.
At the time, the district estimated the cost of the byelection was $80,000.
The previous byelection for a North Vancouver school board seat in 2009 saw 4.75 per cent turnout.
There will be two days of advance voting opportunities – Wednesday, March 26 and Monday March 31, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at West Vancouver municipal hall. On the day of the byelection, polls will be open at the West Vancouver Community Centre’s Lily Lee Room and Bowen Island Community School from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
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