Tom Shypitka was elected mayor of Cranbrook on Saturday night (Oct. 17), while voters also chose six city councillors and five school trustees.
Shypitka defeated former Cranbrook city councillor Lynette Wray in the mayoral race.
Shypitka told Pattison Media after the results were released that he was unsure what to expect from a one-on-one mayoral campaign.
“I’ve never done a municipal campaign one-to-one, one-on-one before. And so in a municipal campaign, what I found out, it’s a lot tighter-knit than a provincial campaign is, because everybody knows everybody, and nobody wants to let their cards out because, you know, they might offend the other person. So, I really had no read on, you know, what the margin would be,” said Tom Shypitka.
Shypitka received 3,378 votes, while Wray received 2,171.
“And I just came down to the feeling it was going to be 50-50. It could be decided by, like, maybe 10 votes or 100 votes or something like that. But when I saw the final results, I was, you know, obviously pleasantly surprised,” he added.
Voters elected Shaun Penner, Joe McGowan, Robin Goldsbury, Bruce Murdoch, current Cranbrook Mayor Wayne Price and Ron Miles to city council.
Shypitka said his priority is bringing council together to serve the community.
“The first priority, obviously, for me is to get the council together and discover our shared vision. Now, it’s a pretty diverse council, and I’m happy to say it’s very diverse. We’ve got a lot of different people on council, and I’m super stoked on that.
“But we have to come together as a team. We’re going to have differences from time to time, but we have to find the common threads between all of us that’s going to really push us forward to setting our priorities and moving in a quick way to benefit the citizens of Cranbrook.
Shypitka also thanked the community for voting.
“Thank you to the people that came out. Thank you to Lynette Wray and her team. They ran a great campaign,” he added.
“Thank you to all the candidates that were part of it, the winners and losers. There’s no real losers. Everybody put their best foot forward.”
Preliminary results for school trustees in District No. 5 show Irene Bischler, Chris Johns, Doug McPhee, Allie Kostiuk and Pamela Berry were elected.
2026 Municipal General Election Results for the City of Cranbrook. (Image Credit: localelections.ca)
Click here to read the full election results.
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