While we well know our summer priorities here in Thompson – namely fishing, boating and campfires at Paint Lake (and even in town now with a fire permit) and hate to sully the season with much ado about politics, we would gently urge readers to spare a thought or two between now and Labour Day for the municipal election for city council coming up Oct. 27.

While nominations can’t be filed until Sept. 15, the campaign periods for both mayor and council are open as of June 30.

The city council we elect in October will serve for the next four years. That’s a long time. We would argue here that one of the best ways to begin to think about where we want to see the City of Thompson go between now and October 2014 is to think about where we have been over the last four years; the kind of local issues we have faced; and the local governance we have enjoyed or endured, depending on one’s view.

Also, keep in mind, dating back to 1867 and the British North America Act, setting out our basic post-Confederation governance structures, municipalities are creature of the provinces and the most junior level in our three-tier federal, provincial and municipal governance system. Without the consent of the Province of Manitoba, there is nothing the City of Thompson or any other Manitoba municipality can do.

Municipal elections are very much a referendum on the performance of the incumbents. Ultimately voters will be assigning a pass/fail grade on the incumbents who choose to seek re-election and are challenged.

The current council was elected in October 2006, following, in popular perception at least, the fractious council under former mayor Bill Comaskey that had been in office between 2002 and 2006.

Much of what has been done by the current council has been achieved largely by consensus. Without us grading Mayor Tim Johnston and councillors Harold Smith, who also currently serves as deputy mayor, Charlene Lafreniere, Oswald Sawh, Judy Kolada, Stella Locker and Erin Stewart individually, it is not unfair to observe that when it hasn’t been possible to collectively achieve consensus around the horseshoe, there are two evident voting blocs on city council – the usually winning majority Johnston, Smith, Lafreniere, Sawh and Stewart left-of centre bloc and the usually losing minority right-of-centre Kolada and Locker bloc, made up of the two longest serving members of council.

Some of the time the differences have been about money, sometimes about principle. Both Locker and Kolada are more fiscally conservative than their freer-spending colleagues in the majority.

That said, it would be a mistake to make too much of the majority and minority voting blocs on council. While the differences are real, much of what council has accomplished has been through a common agenda. And while Locker especially, and Kolada, to a lesser degree, have been on the losing end of a number of votes, Lafreniere, too, as on occasion been the lone vote in opposition, but on principle rather than as a fiscal matter.

Last April, council invoked Section 78 of the Municipal Act to add an eighth councillor as of the October general election, along with the mayor, for a nine-member council, reverting to the size council was until the early 1990s when they dropped a seat.

Two of this council’s least successful ventures, we’d argue, although admittedly politically easy and popular initiatives (remember the last council’s July 2005 youth curfew bylaw?) with angry residents and merchants three years ago demanding council do something about downtown – anything – were the behavioural and anti-graffiti social engineering bylaw initiatives of 2007. They are, we still believe, poorly thought out Band-Aid, cosmetic, non-solutions, enforced by rent-a-bylaw officers until Sept. 6 with – surprise – little real legal authority, it turns out.

The council majority are more than willing to spend your residential property tax dollars to address what they believe have been systemic problems – think infrastructure – left, they believe, unattended for far too many years when the Thompson mindset was the clock was running on nickel mining for Vale and last one out of town turn the lights out.

In that same vein, next up is a new $4-million water utility– with residents paying for metered water – as of Jan. 1. Under the 1956 founding agreement with Vale, the mining company has provided drinking water for free but residents pay for the distribution cost as a less transparent charge in their general tax levy.

Look for the water utility to be followed by a new $25-million wastewater treatment plant. Senior levels of government are offering grants to cover up to 60 per cent of the capital costs – meaning local residents will, Johnston hopes, not end up paying more than 40 per cent of those costs. The province has made it crystal clear for their part that until the city starts charging residents for water, there won't be any provincial money to help defray the cost of a new wastewater treatment plant.

The average residential taxpayer in the City of Thompson is facing a 4.32 per cent tax increase this year – before two additional special levies – and the overall budget increased by $9.75 million to $35.248 million. Last year's budget was $25.497 million.

While the province turned down council’s 2008 attempt to introduce a controversial meal tax, it did allow a five per cent municipal hotel accommodation tax bylaw that came into effect Jan. 1, 2009 and brought in even more its first year than the projected $500,000.

Sixty per cent of that revenue goes into an infrastructure reserve, 20 per cent to public safety reserve and 20 per cent to affordable housing reserve, which includes $54,000 earmarked specifically for Thompson Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation (TNRC)'s “Our Home Kikinaw” initiative, loosely modeled on Habitat for Humanity.

All in all, plenty to think about.