Changing of the Guard

Should the citizens of Ponoka vote for a new slate of Town Council members or should they stick with the old ones?  When you have two candidates for each available seat, that becomes the central question for this election.

In my recent candidate's profile I accuse the present council of being too insular and unresponsive to the voices of Ponoka's residents.  Now  some of the paper's readers may wonder in what way our town council is guilty of this.  The evidence for my accusation is that historically the members of council have come from a very narrow population group or "clique".  The people who have been on council have usually come from the ranks of the self employed or retired.  The reason for this is that the people in these two groups have some control over their daily schedule, whereas those who must make a living for themselves but who do not have such time managment flexibility are unable to serve in public office.

This fact though has resulted in Ponoka, like many small communities, having historically been run by an Oligarchy of a few people who share a common mindset.  Now in the early days of Ponoka this system may have worked well for the town but I do not believe that it is a political system that meets the needs of today's more dynamic society.  And therefore I believe that it is necessary for the town's residents to choose candidates who are of a different mindset.  On that note I would like to point out that it is interesting to see how many of the incumbent candidates are now trying to distance themselves from their historic performance.

By the criteria that I have established above it then also is evident that not all the new candidates are actually any different than the incumbents they are running against.  Some of the new candidates also fit into the same narrow mode because they are part of the same business population and therefore are likely to share in the same current council mindset.