Seven candidates seek to fill the five city seats on the Red Deer Catholic Regional School Division board.
Two candidates will vie for the Catholic division’s ward for Innisfail, Bowden, Olds and Didsbury and a candidate was acclaimed in the division’s ward for Rocky Mountain House, Caroline, Eckville and Sylvan Lake.
There are four incumbents running in Red Deer: Elaine Halter, Adriana LaGrange, Christine Moore and Duane Rolheiser.
New candidates in Red Deer are David Bouchard, Guy Pelletier and Anne Marie Watson.
Incumbent Lloyd Baumgarten has chosen not to run again.
Halter, 57, a speech language pathologist assistant with Alberta Health Services, will be going for a fifth term with the board.
If elected it would be the second term for Adriana LaGrange, 49, a rehabilitative practitioner and full- time farmer.
Duane Rolheiser, 42, owner of 24-7videotours.com, won his seat during a byelection two years ago after the departure of trustee Bev Heisler.
Christine Moore, 48, has served as the board chair since 2007 and will be going for her third term on the Catholic board.
Bouchard, 57, is a former teacher.
Pelletier, 44, is the vice-president of the Red Deer Region with Melcor Developments Ltd. and serves on the board of governors with Red Deer College.
Watson, 42, is a librarian at Red Deer College. She lost a close byelection two years ago to Rolheiser and also ran in the 2007 election.
In the Sylvan Lake, Innisfail, Olds and Bowden ward, one-term incumbent and Innisfail resident Diane MacKay, 53, a home economist by profession who is working as a bookkeeper, faces newcomer Tonya Schaber, from the Olds area, who was not immediately available for comment.
Liam McNiff, 64, a retired teacher from Sylvan Lake, will return as a Catholic trustee after being acclaimed in the ward for Rocky Mountain House, Caroline, Eckville and Sylvan Lake. The seat had been held by Stephen Taylor, who chose not to run again.
McNiff served two terms as a trustee between 2001 and 2007, but had to step down before the end of his term when a provincial government act came into effect in 2004 that wouldn’t allow a teacher to serve as a trustee. He appealed the decision to the Alberta Court of Appeal and won.
The province then appealed the Alberta judgment to the Supreme Court of Canada and won, forcing McNiff to step down.
McNiff is now a retired teacher and is free to take on the role of school trustee again.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com