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Sorley wins in Area F byelection

Joan Sorley has been elected Area F director.

Joan Sorley has been elected Area F director.

Sorley, the former alternate director for the area, won the seat in the Jan. 15 byelection over William Sellars and Charlene Hays.

Sorley earned 184 votes; Sellars came in second with 111 votes and Hays was third with 96. Sorley will be sworn in as the new Area F director at the Cariboo Regional District’s next board meeting, Feb. 11.

“It’s hard not to be excited,” she says of her election. “It’s been an experience through the election process.”

Sorley has held the Area F alternate director position since former director Duncan Barnett resigned last year.

Although she’s been working as an alternate director ever since, she’s glad to finally have a mandate from the voters.

“I guess I do (feel more legitimate),” she says. “I think there are more things that I will be able to do knowing that I have this mandate.”

The election confirmed many of the concerns Sorley knew residents in her area had, but it also brought some new ones to light.

“It was really good to learn that a lot of what I thought I knew about the areas I had reinforced … but also there were some interesting things that came out of the meetings with people that I didn’t know were their concerns.”

Although she’ll have to run again in November’s CRD elections, Sorley will take the intervening 11 months to address outstanding issues like: working with the RCMP on strategies to reduce marijuana grow ops, improving medical staffing shortages at Cariboo Memorial Hospital, bettering consultation with First Nations on land-use issues and addressing the top two concerns identified by residents — the lack of recycling services and the absence of high-speed Internet and cell-phone service in her area.

“We have dial-up and satellite and they are expensive and not entirely reliable,” she says. “It’s a problem if you’re trying to encourage economic development. … It’s a huge issue for this area.”

As for recycling:

“All the rural communities that I have spoken to, recycling is one of their top two issues. They don’t want to recycle at Frizzi Road. … They want to recycle close to home at their dump or their school or their community hall.”