The Village of Point Edward will soon begin the process of bringing in a new council member.
Lauren Drury submitted her resignation as councillor last week in order to pursue a career opportunity in Ottawa.
"When I ran for Councillor in Point Edward, I did so looking forward to a productive four years working on behalf of my fellow residents. I never expected that a professional opportunity would arise that would bring me and my family to Ottawa," said Drury in a written statement to Sarnia News Today. "I'm proud of my time on Council and I appreciated every opportunity to work with my fellow Councillors and Mayor Bev Hand to keep Point Edward an amazing place to live."
Village CAO and Clerk Jim Burns said they are thankful to Drury and the work she did while on council.
Moving forward, Burns said the first step is to declare the seat vacant, which will likely take place during a public meeting on Wednesday, June 14 to go over a rezoning application.
"Then at the next meeting, we'll have a discussion about how we're going to fill the seat," said Burns.
The resignation of a council member has happened a couple of other times in recent years so the municipality is familiar with the process.
"The options are, you either appoint or you hold a by-election. [With] the appointment process, you can basically do whatever council wants. You can select the candidate who finished next in the most recent election, you can advertise and take applications and basically treat it like a job application," he said.
Burns said both of the appointment options specified above were carried out with former mayors Dick Kirkland and Larry MacKenzie.
If council decides to go through with a by-election, Burns said the process could take a few months. Whereas, with an appointment process, the timelines would likely be much shorter.
"So we're meeting on [June 14] to declare the seat vacant, meeting technically on [June 27, and] I believe council could make a decision at that point," said Burns. "If they're going to offer it to the next person [from the 2022] election, that could happen almost immediately after the 27th. If they were going to advertise and look for new candidates, I would think that would probably take a month or 1.5 months."
During the 2022 municipal election, Drury received 377 votes, narrowly beating out Arianna Noctor who received 345 votes.
