New St. John's councillors vow to keep campaign promises

The 11 members of St. John's city council were sworn in at city hall on Monday evening.

The newest councillors said they want to make sure they follow through on their election promises, now that they are at the decision-making table. 

Councillor at Large Dave Lane, Ward 2 Councillor Jonathan Galgay and Ward 4 Councillor Bernard Davis are all new to council. Councillor at Large Art Puddister and Deputy Mayor Ron Ellsworth served on council before.

Dave Lane said he had three priorities during the campaign.

"The main three issues that I ran on and I intend to follow through on are improving our public engagement process — get more people involved in the decisions we are making, also to focus on improving our quality of life by improving things like transit and helping seniors with their taxes and things like that and of course fiscal management is going to be a big one for us through these changing times," Lane said.

Jonathan Galgay said he too is eager to begin working on the issues he feels are most important.

"There are three top issues that I hope to tackle first — one is a lot of the traffic concerns that have been raised throughout the election, as well as the revitalization of Victoria Park and the development of a community engagement strategy," Galgay said. 

"I can't wait to get working on the major issues that were identified during the campaign," Bernard Davis said, "Traffic is one of those major ones that I really want to get involved in."

Dennis O'Keefe, Wally Collins, Bruce Tilley, Tom Hann, Sandy Hickman and Danny Breen were all re-elected on Sept. 24.