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Heading into election campaign, it’s a tale of two cities

By the time this editorial appears in print (though not before it goes to the printer), Thompsonites will know exactly how many new potential mayors, councillors and school trustee candidates they will have to choose from in the Oct. 24 election.

By the time this editorial appears in print (though not before it goes to the printer), Thompsonites will know exactly how many new potential mayors, councillors and school trustee candidates they will have to choose from in the Oct. 24 election. And they will have five weeks to pick the eight councillors, seven school trustees and one mayor to lead them until 2022, which won’t necessarily be a fun job most of the time, with less money to spread around to cover the services citizens expect and not great prospects to see that amount of money increase, at least not by the traditional means of a larger payment in lieu of taxes from Vale.

However, despite the economic gloom and doom that this year has brought to the city, there are some positive signs as well as some indicators that things are at least holding steady.

Although the official numbers upon which the school district’s funding is based won’t be known until Sept. 30, anecdotal reports from the principals of Thompson various schools, be they elementary, high school or – in the case of La Voie du Nord – both, indicate that student enrolment, if not rising, is at least maintaining itself at last year’s levels, which could be a sign that people with young families are not fleeing Thompson for greener economic pastures, though it could just be that newcomers are arriving to replace them or that the trickle down effect of job losses hasn’t begun to make its mark yet. At any rate, though full-day kindergarten is almost certainly a thing of the past in the School District of Mystery Lake come next year, at least the people in charge of local schools are not yet looking at the sort of significant funding drops that the city is facing in the next few years, even if they no longer receive a portion of the grant in lieu of taxes that Vale pays every year.

And while big employers like Vale and the provincial government and Manitoba Hydro and University College of the North – only one of them a private-sector organization – are definitely not in an expansionist mode and, instead, mostly shrinking, some smaller employers like McDonald’s, which now has 85 workers, Walmart and Liquor Mart, are spending money to expand their enterprises, resulting in a mini-building boom on either side of Mystery Lake Road between Station Road and Thompson Drive North. A few blocks over, Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation is building a new gas station on their Mystery Lake Hotel property. Sure, there are already gas stations in town, but we live in a capitalist society and anyone who thinks they can do a better job of delivering a service than someone else is free to spend their money to do it, and customers are free to choose where they will go to spend their money. If competition drives the cost of gasoline down a little bit, will many of us be complaining?

All of this is not to say that Thompson’s future is so bright that we have to wear shades. Petty crime seems to have become a more common thing in recent weeks, as have extreme reactions to it, though so far only in the relatively harmless medium of empty words. And there is an undercurrent of anger and mistrust permeating some conversations about politics, with opponents of one council member or another accusing each other of being dishonest, or seeking personal gain, or somehow or another being involved and/or interested for the wrong reasons. But to their credit, a few people who have been consistent or occasional critics of the city’s elected officials are not choosing to simply remain in the peanut gallery, but are putting their names forward for the chance to end up on the hot seat themselves. It will be interesting to see what happens in next month’s election and whether the new council and mayor will bring in a vision of hope or a regime of cuts, or maybe even a little of both.

As you consider the candidates for the next month – or less if you plan to vote in advance polls – remember that only about 31 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots in the last election – approximately 3,000 out of 9,900 – lower than in the 2010 and 2006 elections, which were both around 40 per cent. While that is a fairly depressing display of apathy, the bright side is that someone who can encourage previous non-voters to come out has a huge pool of potential support to draw from and, last time around, it only took the equivalent of about 10 per cent of eligible voters to wind up with a spot on council.

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