With teachers returning to work next week and the labour dispute no longer the story of the day, week or month, expect the civic election campaigns to fill that news void.
But sadly, a great majority of you out there — yes, I’m referring to you eligible voters — couldn’t care less about why Mayor Gregor Robertson wants to seek a third term or what his challengers would do differently about all those boring issues such as homelessness, transportation and affordable housing.
I’m sort of being facetious.
Sort of because the fact is only 35 per cent of the city’s 418,878 eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2011 election. So the conclusion can be made the rest of you don’t give a flying firetruck who represents you on council, school board or park board.
I’ll save the sermon about how municipal government directly affects you — from taxes to police and fire service to garbage pickup to fixing potholes to bike lanes to towers popping up in your neighbourhood.
But c’mon, is it really that hard to care a little, maybe check out what the candidates are saying and cast a ballot?
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this issue.
Many in the media have done the same over the years.
Whether those pleas have helped, who knows.
Back in the 2011 campaign, the scuttlebutt was that Vancouver was going to see a huge voter turnout because of what was going on in the city at the time. Remember a certain hockey riot in June of that year? Or how about the Occupy folks camped outside the Vancouver Art Gallery?
Robertson and his ruling Vision Vancouver council were in the middle of this, with us media types asking how the city couldn’t see the riot coming or what they were going to do about the Occupy campers, who were fed up with the so-called one per cent having so much power in this city and across the globe.
Remember, too, that one camper died of an overdose there.
I also remember being part of a panel at one of the churches at Nelson and Burrard, where Robertson and then-NPA challenger Suzanne Anton faced off in a debate, only to have it crashed by the Occupy folks.
Cops were called in, there was shouting, it was actually exciting. But while those two stories dominated the headlines, there was also debate about the lack of affordable housing in this overpriced city, the continuing problem of homelessness, the Olympic Village debt, gambling, electoral reform and, of course, bike lanes.
Alas, the issues never really resonated at the polls.
Now we’ve got campers in Oppenheimer Park, debate about whales in captivity, a push from Vision to get a subway built along the Broadway corridor, back and forth about an increase in oil tankers in Vancouver waters and, of course, the ongoing bike lane saga.
In 2002, a whopping 50 per cent of Vancouver voters turned up to the polls. That’s when COPE and Larry Campbell hammered the NPA, which was going through a well-publicized party spat between then-mayor Philip Owen and former councillor Jennifer Clarke.
Don’t forget there was also huge debate about whether the city needed a supervised drug injection site. Getting the Woodward’s building redeveloped was also part of the public discourse.
Campbell attributed his success to a well-organized team on the ground that worked tirelessly to get people to vote. Whatever the reason for that turnout in 2002, city clerk Janice Mackenzie, who doubles as chief election officer, has made it clear she wants more people to vote.
“The higher, the better,” she told me in June.
It’s now September, the election is Nov. 15.
Think about it.
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