Sun Peaks’ Village Council has begun the process of moving the community into a post-Al Raine political era.

The Council has approved an April 5th by-election date, following the appointment of Nicky Jonsson, the Village’s Corporate Services Director, as the Chief Election Officer.

Her appointment is important, because under provincial requirements, the appointment of a Chief Election Officer starts the clock on a by-election process which has to hit certian benchmarks in order for it to be validated.

The nomination window for would-be candidates to take on the Mayor’s position in Sun Peaks opens on February 18th.

Village Chief Administrator and now-deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Deanna Campbell,  says if one of the current members of Council has ambitions for the top spot, they will need to signal that before hand.

“Should a member of Council wish to run for mayor, they will have to resign and vacate their seat,” noted Campbell.  “That would obviously leave us in a position where we would also be including in the by-election, the election of our councillor.”

That resignation will be required as of February 4th, giving any other non-Council candidate an opportunity to make their decisions based around that information.

So far, none of the four members of Sun Peaks Council — Kelly Dye, Len Hrycan, Julie Kimmel and Rob O’Toole — have submitted a resignation letter.

Unlike the recent provincial election, where most non-essential government work grinds to a halt while the campaign and the rest of of the election period plays out, the same is not true for muncipal elections, meaning municipal staff will be pulling double duties as they prepare the vote.

“Running a by-election is exactly the same as running a [scheduled municipal] election.   Same rules apply,” noted Campbell.  “The same amount of work, and resources need to go into it, so we will be kept very busy, but we will also still have to manage a regular work of the municipality at the same time.”

The only Mayor that Sun Peaks has known since incorporation as BC’s first Mountain Resort Municipality in 2010 — Al Raine —  died December 15th, 2024, hours after making his resignation from office official at 12:00am that day.