Today is the day when the majority of people who vote in Thompson’s municipal election will mark their ballots, and the choices they make will determine what sort of leadership the city and the school district will have for the next four years.
While what the results, which should be known within a few hours after polls close at 8 p.m., will be is very much anyone’s guess, a few things are absolutely certain.
For one thing, the people in charge will be substantially different that they are right now. At least four out of seven school trustees will be different than the last four years, and rookie trustees to boot. The amount of turnover will be pretty similar on council, with at least half of the new councillors in the job for the first time and not part of the group that has been making decisions big and small for the last four years.
And while there will definitely be a new mayor, odds are – given that three of the four candidates on the ballot are current members of council – that there will be some continuity with the present administration, though how much precisely will depend on who gets elected, unless Thompsonites decide to take a flying leap into the unknown and elect a candidate who not only has no experience in public office, but has never even voted in an election of any kind until the advance polls of the one in which he is running.
The Thompson Citizen does not endorse candidates running for office. We really don’t know anything more about them than voters as a whole do, and often we know less than individual voters may know about one candidate or another. We do, however, feel that it is important for people to vote, no matter which candidates they choose. Unfortunately, history tells us that substantially fewer than half of the people who are eligible to cast a ballot will do so.
Things have not been easy for Thompson over the four years of the current council’s mandate and they will probably not get easier over the mandate of the incoming group. And in all likelihood, many of the problems citizens are talking about today will continue to be problems in 2022, because many of those problems date back decades and, if they were easy to solve, they wouldn’t be an issue any more.
Once you have gone and cast your ballots, however, it doesn’t mean that you are free of municipal politics for the next four years. Council frequently asks people for input at public meetings, some of which are dismally attended. It is your right to go to council and ask your elected representatives questions and some of those running would like to reinstate the question period at the end of council meetings, so residents can get answers – or at least try to – without having to wait two weeks or maybe more. There are also frequent committee meetings and opportunities to get involved in volunteer groups that seek to make city streets safer or to lobby the municipal government to contribute to the projects these people think will be of benefit to the community. Even something as simple as writing a letter to this newspaper or posting a well thought-out comment or question on social media can contribute to the political process. But don’t expect any miracles from anyone. People who present magical solutions to difficult problems are, at best, deluding themselves and, at worst, being disingenuous for the sake of an appealing soundbite.
Democracy is not government by voting, it is government by the people. As important as voting is, the truth is that the people who are most successful at convincing their elected officials to do their bidding are those who take part between election cycles and do the unglamorous work behind the scenes that lays the foundation for a better future. But for today, simply showing up and making a choice is a good place to start.
