Anyone is welcome to submit a Guest Blog Entry to torontomike.com. I received the following entry earlier today.
Clarington Coverage Of upcoming Municipal Election
As of September 12 Clarington now has six candidates for Mayor. Things are definately heating up with former Mayor Diane Hamre entering into the campaign arena. This latest canidate has declared she is running in this election because she wants to get Council "back on track to the station called democracy." There is a perception of Clarington council that they do not provide a forum for residents to engage in open dialogue or debate issues with council. They are left feeling dismissed and often bullied. Another perception of our current council is that they are developer friendly and in the last election Mayor Mutton raised over $40,000 in campaign contributions. Approx. $1600 of it was from private individuals, and the rest was from mostly developers and contractors. It is nice to see that already a couple of new candidates have declared that they will NOT accept donations from the development industry or companies who do business with the municipality.
I am hopeful that an increase in interest by candidates will be reflected by an increase in voter interest/turnout this November.
It should also be noted that the salary for position of mayor, escalated in the last six years from about eighty thousand dollars to over one hundred and fifty thousand per year with travel expenses.In June of 2005, it was reported that the mayor's mileage allowance from $570 a month to $1,293. What does the mayor of Toronto make per year? I do believe it is considerably less, and for a much bigger population and area. No wonder there is six people running for this mayorâ s seat here.
Jill
It sounds as if your Mayoral election is a great deal more exciting than ours. Ours, it seems, is a mere formality. David Miller will have to be caught eating babies to blow this one, and even then he stands a solid chance of being re-elected.
