Winkler Mayor Henry Siemens has appointed his Deputy Mayor.
At last week's council meeting (Nov. 8th), Siemens announced Councilor Andrew Froese would serve in the role. In Winkler, the deputy mayor is the appointment by the mayor.
"The way I went about that, is I had conversations with each one of the counselors to talk committee assignments and to talk about areas of things that would interest them," said Mayor Siemens. "In the midst of those conversations, I also had some conversation with some of the guys in terms of who we should appoint to that (Deputy Mayor) position." He said although he was already leaning towards Councilor Froese himself, his was a name that came up regularily as a suggesstion for the two-year term.
"Andrew is an active participant at meetings, he is involved in a lot of our committees that have some heavy lifting to do. He asks really good questions, he's prepared to step into whatever hard stuff is going on. I also wanted to have an opportunity to have somebody who would be in different circles than I would be. So I as I walked through that and looked at some very capable people around the table, I ultimately settled on Andrew as being the best choice."
Siemens says Froese will also have the option to extend his term as Deputy Mayor for the following two years, but that is something they will discuss when this initial term ends.
Meanwhile, committee participation is a huge part of being involved in municial politics. In Winkler, Siemens says there are many committees councilors are involved in, not just at the city level, but have multiple community roles as well through committees.
In the week after the October 26th election, Siemens says he had conversations with each councilor individually to ask them what areas they were most interested in serving in.
"Because four of them were incumbents (they) were already sitting in areas that they wanted to serve in. There were some small changes, but nothing very significant. That being said, we also had two new counselors who had interests and skills that we could use as well. So it really was an extremely good conversation that allowed us to discuss where people could serve, where people could bring the most value, and for me to get a bit of a feeling of what each one of the counselors wanted to do as well."