You can find out from the city's website page, Toronto Votes 2010 all you might want to know about becoming a councillor and who is running as well as about being a voter and election worker.
In a previous blog, we talked about the "advantages of incumbency" leading to an inherent "democratic deficit" in our city. Is low voter turnout a result as well? Are the current level of nominations supporting this thesis?
As of Feb 28, 12 of the 44 city wards have received only ONE nomination for the office of councillor (2,5,6,13,16,16,21,22,23,33,39,41). For 4 other wards there are NO nominations (3,4,24,34). Click here to see the ward map and candidates.
Three wards in the North York district have only one nomination _ current councillor (Stintz, Filion, Carroll). Two wards with none (current holders - Shiner, Minnan-Wong)
There are many months to the September nomination deadline. However, in Friday's Mirror columnist Dave Nickle speculates on the impact of the current ward 33 councillor NOT running for mayor. Does he assume that she will win (by acclamation?) - journalist David is a Shelley Carroll fan and it shows in his columns.
Unlike the Star's Royson James ("flat earth" image -see an earlier post link), he lauds her budget balancing skills as "budget chief". (We must presume that she had been aware of the city's $200 million surplus _ but was silent and was able on her own to cut deeper and increase user fees substantially. But why was she apparently unaware of the large _$200-450 million unfunded sickpay/leave liability that wasn't on the city's books? If she had been, why wasn't it recognized in previous budgets?)
Would the allowance of municipal political parties bring out more candidates sooner? Have the new contribution restrictions hurt new candidate prospects more the current office holders?
Here are links to the 2006 Election some might want to review -
ELECTION FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE http://app.toronto.ca/EFD/main.do
RESULTS http://www.toronto.ca/elections/results/
Ward 33 at 34% had one of the lowest voter turnouts in the city in 2006!
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