This story has been updated from its original version.
Another incumbent MRC Pontiac mayor has been elected without opposition after their opponent backed out at the last minute.
Sheenboro mayor Doris Ranger claimed her third consecutive term by acclamation (her fourth total) after former councillor Shamus Morris rescinded his candidacy earlier today (Oct.15).
In a message to THE EQUITY, Morris said he wanted to help out the community, but is selling his property in Sheen and didn’t want the possibility of triggering a by-election.
“My mind changes back and forth every day,” he wrote. “As much as I’d like to fix things in Sheenboro, carry on with my idea for municipalities to find things they could share and try to reverse the former council’s decision to transfer the Trout Lake road to the MNRF, my farm is actually for sale and if it were to sell I would probably move out of the area and don’t want to cause another election.”
Now just over a third (7/18) of the MRC Pontiac council of mayors have been acclaimed, with six of the seats filled by incumbents.
Ranger served on council before being elected mayor in a by-election in 2014, a position she’s held ever since. She told THE EQUITY her goals for this term will be to improve cooperation with neighbouring jurisdictions.
“I guess our challenge now would be to expand shared services with our neighbouring municipalities to help control costs, because small communities, you know what, there’s not always the money to go around,” she said.
Regarding the municipality’s decision last term to transfer ownership of the municipally-owned sections of Trout Lake Road to the provincial ministry of natural resources, Ranger didn’t have much to add.
“I don’t really consider it a big issue,” she said. “There’s big fish to fry here, prepar[ing] for door-to-door recycling and garbage, which is upon us now.”
At the MRC level, she said she was focused on the regional integration of fire services, as well as door-to-door collection of waste and recycling. She pointed to the integration of the fire services of Sheenboro, Chichester and L’Isle-aux-Allumettes into the Pontiac Ouest Fire Department as a big file she’s worked on that benefited the municipality.
“It’s been great, we can afford the service. It’s never going to get cheaper,” she said.
“The government is putting so much on you when it comes to fire services and the safety of communities,” she continued. “It all goes back on the municipality, and we couldn’t afford that. We don’t even have a fireman in Sheenboro anymore. It’s an aging community.”
While Bryson and Fort-Coulonge opted to reduce their number of councillors to four from six for this upcoming term, Sheenboro chose to stay with six despite only having a year-round population of 149 according to the 2021 census (a rate of around 21 residents per elected official).
Ranger said that, since the municipality already shares a website and fire services with Chichester and Allumettes, if council were presented with a plan for amalgamation, she would consider it.
“We are exploring sharing public works and administration [ . . . ] That will be up for someone to show us how that’s managed,” she said.
Correction Oct. 20: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Ranger ran for mayor in 2013. She was elected in a by-election in 2014.
