Your vote will help shape the future ... if you choose to use it

It will be a surprise if half of Peterborough’s voters take advantage of that right on Monday.

Four years ago municipal election turnout was 46 per cent. It has been many decades since a mayor and 10 city councillors (aldermen, back then) were elected on the votes of even 60 per cent of the city.

That doesn’t mean council lacks the authority to make decisions. A poll that covers 46 per cent of any group would be highly accurate and election results, even where less than half the people vote, reflect the common will.

Still, stronger turnout at the polls creates a greater public sense of legitimacy for council decisions.

With that in mind, we present some facts for consideration by anyone not intending to vote.

City council’s decisions have a deep and long-lasting impact on what Peterborough looks like, how it functions and how agreeable it is to live in, or not.

And by “agreeable” we mean for everyone. For some, more bicycle lanes and walking trails would be more agreeable. For others it would be wider streets and fewer traffic lights.

Those two groups might not vote for the same candidates, but both are looking for an outcome they agree with.

The way to get it is to vote.

Consider some of the changes the current council has begun or completed in the past four years:

• An historic land swap in which the city would pay Cavan Monaghan Township and Peterborough County more than $60 million, along with tens of millions more to service industrial and housing sites that would be created.

• The controversial sale of the city-owned utility company’s electricity distribution network to Hydro One for more than $105 million.

• An innovative plan to turn downtown Bethune St. into a linear park. Along with converting the Louis St. parking lot into a public square it will be the biggest transformation of public space since the Millennium Park project.

• Paying the Downtown Business Improvement Area $3 million over 20 years as an incentive to drop its opposition to a casino at The Parkway and Highway 115.

• Rejecting a request from city police to pay for surveillance cameras at most downtown intersections.

Other decisions have less general impact but matter deeply to some. Banning backyard chickens, for instance, or deciding not to bring the Lord’s Prayer back to council meetings.

The notion that governments can’t get anything done has always been popular. In fact, as that very abbreviated list shows, they can and do.

And what gets done is done with largely with your money. City council will spend $270 million delivering services this year; $143 million of it comes from property taxes and surcharges paid directly by city property owners.

Don’t own a home? Tenants pay their share as part of the rent collected by landlords.

It only makes sense to have a say in where your money goes, and why.

More big decisions are coming in the next council term. The fate of that land swap with Cavan Monaghan will be the most important. Another scheduled for early 2019 is whether to replace the Memorial Centre, and where that new arena-entertainment complex might go.

City council matters, which means elections matter, to everyone.

On Monday, stake your claim to the direction Peterborough takes.

Vote.