This year’s municipal elections, in the majority of Manitoulin Island communities, demonstrate that many, many people want the opportunity to serve their fellow citizens in this special way and so are either defending the mayor/reeve’s, councillor’s or school board trustee’s position they’ve held during the past four-year term or are challenging for a seat at the council table.
The exceptions on Manitoulin Island are the West End municipalities of Gore Bay and, 20 kilometres westward along Highway 540, the township of Burpee-Mills where the respective mayor and reeve were acclaimed unchallenged and each municipal council is also acclaimed with a mixture of experienced councilors staying on and new individuals filling the seats left by retirees.
In every other municipality, however, it’s quite a different story with virtually every position in play (with the exception of the Northeast Town’s incumbent mayor who was acclaimed to office and, in Assiginack, one councillor stepped up to fill the vacancy left by the retiring reeve and he, too, was acclaimed to office).
But that’s it: every other elected position among Manitoulin’s municipalities is being contested.
Voters, and the candidates themselves, especially those challenging for a seat at a local council for the first time should be reminded that no matter what planks are generally in their election platforms, they will come together after the election with another three, or five or seven councillors (depending on the municipal makeup) each one of whom will without doubt have emphasized slightly different priorities during their individual campaigns.
So then what?
Then, it is up to them as responsible individuals, newly entrusted with the oversight of the municipality, to quickly come together in as much of a team as possible for the common good, while still looking for situations where there is a good fit for their particular priority vision.
Leadership is key here and whoever becomes the mayor or reeve will have to assess the individual strengths of the people voters have chosen to make prudent decisions on their behalf and assign councillors to committees and other important work where he or she sees them being most effective.
The early days of a new council, especially one where there have been substantial numbers of new faces chosen for office, is a critical period and the watching public looks forward to being assured that rancour is minimal (ideally non-existent), and that their reeve/mayor and council move ahead to smoothly carry on from where the pre-election council left off.
People challenging for office, especially for the first time, are virtually always motivated by the intention they can do the job better than some others. When they are actually elected, it is prudent for them to sit on personal objectives, no matter how noble, for a while until they have the opportunity to get the measure of the rest of the team, and likewise everyone else of him/her.
Personal progress in municipal affairs is usually and best accomplished by baby steps over a long period as any new council is simply taking over where the last group left off and there will be many, many different strands of municipal business that are ongoing and which will have to be picked up, learned about and seen to their various conclusions by the new group around the table.
It is always a popular thing to campaign on saving taxpayers money and keeping taxes low. It would certainly be news if a candidate’s platform revolved around high taxes.
Everyone, both elected officials and voters, want improved roads, streets and sidewalks, a reliable and efficient way of disposing of their household garbage, efficient snow removal and these are budget items where there is usually unanimity about their priorities among councillors in each of our municipalities.
What councils should guard against, though, is penny pinching in the funding of those municipal services that are in and of themselves important to the quality of life here for ordinary citizens.
These could include ordinary services like libraries, parks, special local events, museums and the arts.
Will all of the services named here be important to every citizen? Likely not.
But most certainly some of them, drawn just from this short list, will be of significance to everyone and will contribute a great deal to a fulfilling life experience because they live in a particular municipality where they can know that while they must pay their taxes, they can also enjoy art shows at their local museum or take their grandchildren to the public park and public beach for recreation and use the library for the variety of services offered there. It’s not all about hard-surfacing rural roads, extending the life of landfill sites or squabbling with the town’s administration as the next year’s budget is being prepared.
Here’s something to think about.
During the last term of council, the Town of Gore Bay completed, through its museum, a major arts project that has created an enormous amount of studio space in one of the old “incubator buildings” on the waterfront. It also completed the process of assuming the ownership of its marina from the federal government and has a plan in place to continue to improve these facilities and it found a new and better home for the Gore Bay/Western Manitoulin Fish and Game Club’s salmon hatchery in a municipally-owned facility. These are all what might be considered “soft”, not core, services compared to roads and landfill sites.
But it’s also interesting to note that, in Gore Bay, where these accomplishments were clearly priorities of the past council, there are for this election no contested seats around the council table and no one will have to vote in Gore Bay on October 27, except for school trustee.
