From the start of his time in office, City of Dauphin Mayor David Bosiak said he won't be seeking a second term when the time comes. Now the time is here, and sure enough, his name isn't on the ballot for the upcoming Manitoba Municipal Election.
Looking back at his time as Mayor, Bosiak said he's glad he got the chance to work with such a good council.
"The thing that comes to mind the most is the cooperative nature of council. The culmination of a great council and a very competent senior administration team made work pretty easy for me, in the sense that everybody's on the same page...it's a credit to the people that are around the table, because I think they all come, we all come to the table with our own objectives and things that we think need to be improved, added, fixed, changed, yet this group of people worked very well together, in the sense that we understood what the ultimate goal was, making Dauphin a better place to live, to work, to play, to be," said Bosiak.
Over the past 4 years, Bosiak and Council have accomplished quite a few things of note, including collaborations with the RM of Dauphin and the Provincial Government, and keeping the budget fairly manageable. There have also been some hard times Bosiak had to manage, like the Carberry bus crash in 2023. They've also managed to navigate one of the worst natural disasters the Parkland has seen in more than 50 years with recent severe flooding in July. Bosiak said without the great relationships the City has build over the years with the Province and various Municipal Governments, getting through the tough times would have been much more difficult.
"We spent a lot of time developing those relationships, and then when we need to have a discussion with somebody, we were very able to have those discussions, where I think that if we hadn't created the relationships, the challenge of getting in front of a senior minister, it's a big challenge," said Bosiak.
Despite how well the City of Dauphin has done over Bosiak's term, he didn't go into the job with a mindset of making large amounts of positive change. In fact, himself and a few other members of Council ran to do quite the opposite: make sure there wasn't negative change in the community. Bosiak, being a lifelong Dauphinite, wanted to see his City thrive.
"Looking around at the end of Covid, the end of that sort of convoy period in Canada, I had a sense, and a few other members of Council were fearful that if certain people got elected based on what they were saying in public, that there may be some challenges for the community," said Bosiak.
What's next for Bosiak? A bit of a break, spending time doing things he didn't really have the time for while he was in office. But the lessons he learned from that time will stay with him for a while.
