Councillor Garett Cochrane will be Yellowknife’s next deputy mayor.
In his pitch for the role, Cochrane told fellow councillors on Monday he has grown as a leader over the past “short but tumultuous year,” highlighting challenges like the city’s evacuation.
He described himself as a “diplomatic, calm and reliable leader” who may disagree but is not disagreeable. He joked that he “will have no issues wrangling all of you cats back in order” when chairing meetings, adding he will “be there in a flash” if they want to “talk about the virtues of garbage disposal again” at 7am.
“Being that I’m the first gay Métis on council, who probably wouldn’t have had the chance like this 20 to 30 years ago, this is not lost on me,” he said.
“I think at its most best, the deputy mayor should be in many ways representative of what modern Yellowknife looks like and I, like everyone else who sits in these chairs, am at least a reflection of that.”
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Cochrane, who was born and raised in Yellowknife, was elected to council in 2022.
The deputy mayor is responsible for overseeing meetings and events when the mayor is unavailable, and also has signing authority in those circumstances.
City councillors vote to appoint a new deputy mayor at the start of every year.
Cochrane replaces Stacie Arden-Smith, who had expressed interest in continuing in the role for a third year.
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Mayor Rebecca Alty thanked Arden-Smith for her work. She said council likes to rotate the role of deputy mayor so as many councillors as possible can fill the role and learn from it.
On Monday, councillors also decided which council members would join the city’s various committees, such as the community advisory board on homelessness and the heritage committee.
Mayor Alty recommended that council create a new “human resource and compensation committee” focused on the city manager’s role, in part to provide recommendations related to the recruitment of a replacement for current manager Sheila Bassi-Kellett.
Bassi-Kellett has announced she plans to step down from the role at the end of March.
