OLDS — Judy Dahl is back in the mayor’s chair, after a four-year hiatus, according to unofficial Oct. 18 municipal election results, issued by the Town of Olds Monday night.
According to those results, Dahl beat incumbent Michael Muzychka for that seat by 222 votes: 1,268 to 1,046.
Dahl served as mayor for 13 years before withdrawing nomination papers in the 2017 election. That enabled Muzychka to become mayor by acclamation.
Dahl said she was elected for one primary reason.
“I got elected in my own personal opinion because this is what people were telling me: they trusted me,” Dahl said.
Dahl agreed that COVID restrictions were an issue in at least one case and she did hear concerns about the town’s decision to turn the Olds Fibre Ltd., which governed O-NET into a municipally-owned corporation.
But she said she heard from residents about many other concerns, including the need for more athletic fields.
Muzychka noted the election was very close.
“It was a squeaker,” he said.
He was asked if COVID restrictions hurt his chances.
“That may be,” he said. “I had heard quite a few complaints about the way things were going with the COVID and the REP (Restrictions Exemption Program) and that stuff, so yeah, maybe that did affect it for sure.”
During the election campaign, Muzychka and others stressed that COVID restrictions were imposed by the provincial government; the Town had no choice but to implement them.
He agreed the O-NET decision and the COVID restrictions were “two big contentious issues” but said overall, it’s too early for him to have analyzed precisely what the factors were.
