Usually when the mayor and council make some sort of decision, especially one that requires spending money, or raising taxes or water rates, there’s no shortage of responses in council chambers, on social media, or in any of Thompson’s many gathering places. Overall, plenty of people will have opinions about whether these decisions were right or wrong, and they aren’t shy about sounding off about what they would do if they were in the same position.
Of course, it’s easy to say things. But actually doing them requires a little bit of a more sustained effort.
In a recent article in the Municipal Leader, the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) magazine, Thompson Mayor Dennis Fenske, one of several mayors in Manitoba not seeking re-election on Oct. 24, said that it was time for new leadership in this community, noting that while council had a good balance of men and women, it isn’t reflective of Thompson’s population as a whole, particularly its immigrant and First Nations population, though at least one member of the current council was born outside of Canada.
At this point, however, although it’s early in the process, not a lot of people are completely decided about putting their money where their mouths are, given that, since the registration period for mayoral candidates began at the start of May, there’s been only one person to step forward−two-term councillor Penny Byer. And while councillor and school board trustee registration only began July 30, so far there’s just a single candidate, Godfrey Buhagiar, one of Thompson’s citizens who regularly attends council meetings, and frequently asks questions to the mayor, whether during the general inquiries portion of the meetings, or in letters to the editor in the Thompson Citizen.
Without any disrespect to either of the two candidates we have so far, they don’t exactly represent new blood or a step towards a more demographically representative council.
There are plenty of reasons for people to be reluctant to step forward as mayoral or council candidates right now, given that the economy of the city’s major industry is in a downward part of its cycle, or at least not a rising one, and the next four years are going to be mainly about doing as much as possible with less, and facing difficult decisions like how – or if – to maintain transit service in the face of losing the contractor who provides drivers literally a week after the election date. A lot of the decisions that the next council makes aren’t going to be easy, and they aren’t going to be popular, and the people who make them will be subject to criticism from the city’s residents.
But hopefully the slow start to the election campaign period is more about the fact that it is summer and the weather is nice and the kids are out of school and there’s still plenty of time before the registration of candidates closes on Sept. 18.
Last time around, Thompson was not afflicted by the problem many municipalities in the province face of so few candidates stepping up so that elections aren’t even necessary. In 2014, there were 18 candidates for council, 11 for the school board and two for mayor, a total of 31 for only 16 available positions, with the race for council featuring two candidates for every one available seat. We’ll see come September if vying for the right to represent fellow taxpayers and residents will be as popular this October as it was four years ago.
