The warden of the Municipality of the District of Guysborough says the fall municipal election should be pushed to next year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vernon Pitts says council has sent a letter to the province with the request and reasoning for pushing the election to October 2021.
Pitts tells The Hawk it will be nearly impossible to conduct a proper door-knocking campaign, voting will be a serious challenge with hygiene and physical distancing standards in place, and polling places would be potential COVID-19 hotspots.
“We should be postponing this for a year because, first and foremost, this will be an awful mess to leave an incoming council,” he says. “Especially if it’s a new council, they’re going to get pushed into this right away.”
Pitts says even though he, and council, doesn’t agree with the province’s decision to hold municipal elections as normal, they are a creation of the province, so don’t have any choice but to go ahead.
He says he hopes the province will provide some kind of direction on how to run an election during a pandemic.
