Candidates?

The News-Miner reminds folks of the importance of the upcoming October 3rd elections:

And yet it can easily be argued that the outcome of local election–for the Fairbanks North Star Borough, its school board, and the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole–affects the day-to-day life of more people than does the outcome of the state election.

Decisions about allocating school funding are made locally. So to, to some extent, are the choices about what our children learn in the borough’s schools.

This week's Nome Nugget, which I can't find on-line yet, also exhorts readers to pay attention to the upcoming elections and even run for office. So far in Nome, there are no candidates for school board or utility board and only the incumbents are running for re-election.

And so, at a time when folks in Nome are getting pretty testy about the Rock Creek development, it seems a perfect time to run for office. There are numerous eloquent people who have been addressing the common council in Nome in past weeks. On this morning's Sounding Board, there were numerous (more than I've ever seen) callers who state their opposition to the gold mine. Surely, one or two of those would make a good candidate.

Of course, it would be a lot of work and it would mean that these people have to concern themselves with the both the controversial and the mundane aspects of city life. It would probably curtail their social lives. It would force them to learn about quite a lot of new issues. There'd be a lot of hard work and you wouldn't be able to show up a meeting, state your piece, feel self-satisfied, and then walk out on the rest of the meeting. But the communities need people who are willing to do some hard work to function.

I, of course, won't be running for office because of the conflict of interest with my job but also because I am forbidden from holding office as an Americorps volunteer.