[All] The new Waterloo Regional Councillor

[Daphne Nichollls]

Hi Grenners....
Perhaps you'd be interested in Gord's math perspective in the following proposal.
Best wishes,
Daphne

Dear Mr. Selling,
We were sorry to hear of the unexpected death of Mr. Wettlaufer who had served our community for many years. Several days after the announcement of his death, The Record reported that council would have to decide on the procedure for selecting his replcement on Regional Council.
> 
> We are writing to you  to request that you select the replacement for Mr. Wettlaufer from the next highest candidate on the result list of the October 2014 election.
> 
> Our reasons for this are as follows:.
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> We are in a time when the Region has many large expenses,such as the new LRT, and at the same time our region has been hit by some major layoffs of workers. There are a lot of people in Waterloo Region who are hurting financially and it would be best if the Region could avoid the unnecessary expense of a by-election.
> 
> Second, we have looked at the vote count for the top six councillors and noticed the following:
>   In position 3  Mr. Wettlaufer    17445 votes
>   In position 4 Mr. Lorentz           16978 votes
>   In position 5  Ms. Clarke            16562 votes
>   In position 6  Mr. Dearlove       14426 votes
> 
> The first point to notice is that candidates Clarke and Dearlove obtained significant support- well over 10000 votes for each.
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> The second point to observe is that Ms Clarke was only 416 votes behind Mr Lorentz. The number of votes between them was relatively small and in fact only amounted to a 2.45% difference. 
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> It is clear that if Ms. Clarke were able to take the empty seat on council, then the decision to appoint the next candidate could be supported by an arithmetic argument which  shows that Ms Clarke had very strong support from the community.
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> If Ms Clarke is not available to fill the vacant council position then the arithmetic argument is not as strong for Mr. Dearlove, but still viable. In his case the difference in vote count between his position and Mr Lorentz's position is 3019, which amounts to a 17.8% difference. If he were the only person available to fill the vacant position then council would have a more difficult decision and would have to give more weight to the financial argument when deciding whether  to call a by-election.
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> In conclusion we request that you circulate  our letter to all members of  Regional Council and support the appointment of Ms. Clarke to the vacant Regional Councillor position by introducing a motion to appoint her to the vacant position (provided she is still available).
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> Thank you for your consideration of our request.
> 
> Yours truly
> 
> Gordon & Daphne Nicholls
> 36 The Crestway
> Kitchener, N2P 2J2
>