Kingsville’s mayor-elect is ready to hit the ground running when council reconvenes in a couple of weeks.
Mary Ellen Havlik bested incumbent Dennis Rogers, long-time councillor Thomas Neufeld and challenger Roshan Nallaratnam in the October 26 municipal election to become Kingsville’s first female mayor.
Born at Leamington Hospital and raised on the family farm on Main Street in Kingsville, Mary Ellen Havlik has also spent considerable time in Nigeria, where she was working with the Canadian government after a three-year stint at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa.
“I worked for four years as a diplomat in Nigeria, and saw some really huge opportunities there,” she said. “It was such a dynamic, fantastic country.”
She then decided to take a leave of absence from her government job and plant some roots there — and stayed for 21 years. She feels that her international and business development experience from her time away will be an asset to her newly-elected position.
And although she was away for that long, she never severed her ties in Kingsville.
“I never really left Kingsville,” she says. “I own two homes here and my mother is here, my sisters are here, so I’ve always kind of been back and forth and this has always felt like home.”
Havlik has maintained lifelong friendships in Kingsville and looks forward to serving the residents of her community.
She says that in her door-knocking days of the campaign, she heard some clear messages that kept coming through.
“I think there’s a level of dissatisfaction with the town in some parts,” she says. “And I think it’s critical that we conduct an administrative review. I want to make sure we are not over-resourced in our town.”
She says that she did promise she’d do the administrative review and a financial review, and she believes that’s what the residents want.
“People are struggling in Canada,” she said. “A lot of people are finding it difficult to put gas in their car and eat three meals a day, pay for their homes, taxes etcetera. So, I do think it’s really important to see where we have discretionary spending.”
Havlik says she believes in collaboration with the public and has plans to bring back committees and working groups that will include members of the public who can offer a fresh perspective.
When it comes to the waterfront, she says it’s an area they need to focus on, but she doesn’t want to make big mistakes that are irreparable in the future.
“My proposed plan would be to put together a small working group to see what was proposed in the past, what we can easily implement and what would be affordable so people can see we’re moving in the right direction,” she said.
She is also cognizant of that fact that Kingsville has a storied past of rich cultural and community events like Victorian Days, Kingsville Music Festival and the Highland Games.
“I don’t want to be critical of the current administration, because I know that they’ve done a lot of hard work to keep these things going, but I would like to get a better understanding of why we moved away from some of them.”
In the end, she says it’s about wanting a good life for the residents and community events promote that quality of living in the town.
“We need to find a way to bring people together and have these events that really make people proud of being in Kingsville again,” she said. “So yeah, I don’t have all the answers but I’m hoping our very intelligent public will come up with lots of suggestions and that, to me, is what’s important.”
