Surfergeeks

It’s election time and on October 25th we hit the polls to decide the fate of our fair city for the next four years. Thanks to fellow tweeters including, but not limited to, @late2game, @fowgre, and @kvl, I’m more interested and involved in this election than I have been in any previous election.

The race for mayor, despite having quite a few candidates, really seems to have only two realistic contenders – Anne Marie DeCicco-Best and Joe Fontana. The gap between them and the remaining candidates seems impossible to bridge. In fact there was some debate online today whether or not The London Free Press has hindered bridging that gap by not giving equal press to all mayoral candidates. It was an interesting exchange with both sides making some good points and I was thankful to be able to be an observer. I haven’t yet decided who is getting my vote but I do know some candidates that are definitely out of the running.

Of more interest to me is the race for my ward. To this end, I sent the following email to all five candidates this past Sunday afternoon (Sept. 12):

As a resident in Ward 1, I’d like to know what you see as being the most vital issues to the city and, more specifically, to our ward? What ideas, concepts, and/or plans do you have to address to these issues? Are you, or do you plan on, taking any additional steps to reach out the younger voters that are more “connected” in an effort to get them out to vote come election day?

I hope this is the beginning of a constructive dialog that will allow me to decide who to vote for on October 25th.

As you can read, I’m not asking for the world here. In fact I would think that my questions would be perfect questions for canned pre-prepared responses with very little tweaking required.

As of tonight (Wed. Sept. 15), only one candidate has responded. Gilles Longtin responded yesterday morning. I won’t reprint the email here as I didn’t receive permission to do so however if you read the Q&A with London Votes it pretty much mirrors the reply I received. Unfortunately the response didn’t really address any of my questions. There were no specific issues addressed (other than being tired of the way Ward 1 was viewed by the rest of the city) and there were no specific (or vague) plans, ideas, or concepts offered as to how to resolve the issues that weren’t addressed. The Q&A link above at least addressed connecting with the online voters whereas the response I received did not mention any online component of the candidate’s campaign.

Of the five candidates Raymond Day is the only one with a website. Unfortunately the website webpage is very rudimentary and seems purposely designed to make people not want to read it. I forced my way through and unfortunately Mr. Day, an apology for poor grammer [sic], does not earn you a pass for such a poorly designed offering. The design and content of the page, combined with the choice of election photo, makes me question the seriousness of the candidate.

The candidate that has disappointed me the most is Bud Polhill. As a veteran local politician that also has other family members running for various positions in local government, I was expecting more from him. I expected that he would be the first to respond to my email and provide some good responses to my questions. Sadly, I have heard nothing.

I find it interesting that the election that I finally decide to pay attention to is the election where it seems that no one wants my vote. If I hear from any of the other candidates I’ll be sure to follow up here and on twitter.

Wow. I’ve been thinking about this post for the past couple days as I knew it was coming up but I’m still not sure what to say. I could blather on for pages probably but I don’t really know if all those words would convey what the past five years have meant for me. Sure, there’s been days that I just want to grab him around the neck and throttle him like Homer does to Bart but then he does something or says something that just makes my heart melt and makes it impossible to stay mad at the little guy. Even the days that he is bad are FAR outnumbered by the days that he rocks. One of the most recent examples of this was just yesterday. He decided that he wanted some juice so he goes into the kitchen to get some juice. He came out of the kitchen empty handed. Why? Not because he drank it already. Not because he spilled it. He came out empty handed because he also got his little brother some juice as well – the last of it. He gave up pouring himself juice so Ryan could have some. It’s not possible to explain what selfless means to a five-year old (okay, four at the time) – trust me, I tried. I hope that one day he’ll go back through this site and read the entries from me & Nikki so that he’ll realize that even though we yell at him and send him to his room or take away his computer that we always love him.

Happy 5th Birthday Alex! This day is for you!