Cynthia Block will be Saskatoon's next mayor

Cynthia Block is the 29th mayor of Saskatoon, and the first woman elected to the position in the city's history.

Block lead with 27,415 votes by publication time, with all but two polls reporting. Runner up Gordon Wyant, had just under 19,000 votes.

Block was the only member of the previous council in the running for mayor. She represented Ward 6 for the last eight years before making her bid for the mayor’s chair.

Throughout the campaign, she fought the characterization that she was the torch bearer for outgoing mayor Charlie Clark’s old regime.

“I try to hear all sides, and then I do my homework. I read the evidence and the data that exists, and then it's a judgment call in the field,” she told CTV News in an interview earlier this month.

“That's the process that I take, and if it happens to align more or less with one colleague or another, that's never going to be how I make a decision.

“It will always be based on the foundational principles of what I think good governance looks like.”

Former mayor Clark opted not to seek another term.

Wyant, the runner up, was a former Saskatchewan Party cabinet minister. No stranger to Saskatoon’s city hall, Wyant was elected councillor as Ward 5 in 2003. He served until 2010, when he successfully ran for a seat in the provincial legislature.

His attempt to return to city hall followed on the heels of a provincial election that saw the Sask. Party lose all but one of its seats in the province’s two largest cities.

Former Saskatoon mayor Don Atchison came in third, with 9,517 votes at publication time. Atchison served as mayor from 2003 to 2016, presiding over an unprecedented expansion of the city and the highest tax increase in recent memory — 7.43 per cent in 2014.

Cary Tarasoff came in fourth, with 5,900 votes at publication time. Tarasoff has been a vocal critic of city spending for years, and a noted voice in opposition to the federal housing plan that forced sweeping changes to city zoning to fast track the construction of higher density housing in established neighbourhoods.

It’s unclear if Wyant’s association to the Sask. Party hurt his chances at victory, but he did make efforts to differentiate his positions from his former provincial cabinet mates.

Wyant spoke out against a private Christian school embroiled in abuse allegations after an email surfaced last month showing school officials making direct overtures to Wyant — a former education minister.

Meanwhile, the school has faced virtually no sanction from the provincial government and has rebranded as Valour Academy.

With no incumbent running in five council seats, Block will preside over a chamber full of new faces.

They step into the role as the City of Saskatoon struggles against major financial headwinds.

Last year, councillors approved the highest property tax increase in a decade in the face of inflationary pressures. Many newcomer candidates campaigned on promises to take a hard look at city programs and refocus on core services.

In her campaign, Block cautioned that the programs they’re concerned with make up just a “fraction of one per cent” of the budget. The bulk of the budget is already tied to those core services, she said.

Block described the problem as structural.

Property taxes are the only means cities have of generating revenue, unlike other levels of government. Block has advocated for cities to create coalitions to lobby the federal government for baseline funding for municipal services.

-With files from Keenan Sorokan