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| Voting opens at 8AM Saturday at the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre the polls close at 8PM, with the results to be announced shortly after |
Regardless, after today, we'll hear no more of campaign promises or message making themes and instead as the doors to the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre open at 8AM, the voters will have the final say towards who will serve on City Council and School Board for the next four years.
The last week has been one of a push of information whether through the social media feeds for those candidates that are using that option as their main conduit of campaign messaging.
Residents have seen some info relay by way of flyers in the mail, along with newspaper ads and the annual parade of candidate biographies that have made it to the pages of the weekly newspaper.
Media Coverage of the campaign itself has been limited mostly to that of reviews of the two candidates forums that were held, though even there, the coverage has been spotty to almost absent for most local media outlets.
It's been a campaign with little in the way of a look at what should have been sone potential issues, other than the Port Tax Cap theme which was introduced just as the 2022 election campaign got underway.
A topic which for the most part pushed aside many of the other themes that the candidates should have seen raised and been focused on over the course of the last month.
The campaign has been a curious one of sorts with none of the challengers suggesting that a change of the Current Council make up is required.
Instead rather than suggesting that the current council may have missed a few things or taken a wrong turn on occasion over the last four years, the challengers for the most part campaigned as a collective that is just hoping to become part of the team.
All of those seeking office for the most part have saluted the outgoing Mayor and City Council vision plans of the last eight years, though few offered up any ideas as to how they may fund all the projects and vision making that has been proposed.
Most just suggesting that they would like to be part of Council to continue on with the work.
With Social media now the last opportunity for some final message making, expect to see a flurry of messages from the candidates through the next few hours in the lead up to Saturday's vote.
In the Council race, the Social media engagement has been varied, for candidates Wade Niesh and Gurvinder Randhawa, the Facebook vibe started with a campaign announcement at the start of the re-election bid and has featured little else in information sharing since.
Incumbents, Barry Cunningham, Nick Adey and Reid Skelton-Morven have been more active in their message sharing, some expanding on their themes in more detail that the others who take a more general view of their campaign.
The three challengers for Council have also been varied in their use of their Social media pages, Teri Forster and Sheila Gordon-Payne ramping up their observations and campaign themes over the last week, while Andy Chugh appears to have scaled back on his engagement as the campaign has come to a close.
The scenario is much the same in the Mayor's race, where some more than others have been very active.
Herb Pond has been the most engaged through his Facebook themes, a daily diet of messages, video presentations and endorsements, along with a range of questions for his themes from those reading his posts, some of them answered, others left to the side.
Chrystopher Thompson has been the second most active on Social Media, reinforcing his themes as the weeks have moved forward, though with nowhere near as much volume as Mr. Pond.
Jason Hoang has mostly used his Social media stream to share a few videos of his campaign vision, though there have been few details on any kind of plans he may have for the community should he have the endorsement of the electorate.
The campaign that seems to be the one of most mystery belonged to Steve Fitzpatrick, who other than the election forums and his newspaper bio has kept a pretty low profile.
That however changed last night it seems, the candidate making a rare use of his Facebook page to take on Herb Pond with Mr. Fitzpatrick sharing his concerns over how he views the former mayor's candidacy in 2022.
A commentary which could make for a controversial closing few hours for the 2022 campaign.
As voters head for the polls, they will have to weigh the candidate's own message making which naturally paints all in a pretty impressive picture, the entries making note of the work of the incumbents more recently and perhaps even Mr. Pond and Ms. Gordon Payne in their previous electoral periods.
With Mr. Pond calling back to his previous time on council and running under the 're-elect' theme as part of his 2022 campaign, it thus makes his work of over a decade ago, one which now becomes part of his campaign narrative and that too is something that voters need to review.
The same could be said for former Councillor Gordon-Payne who made her return to civic politics with this election.
For the remaining challengers the slate is a little cleaner, with no past municipal council experience, voters will be viewing them as more of a fresh face to consider among the more familiar council members now up for re-election.
Since the work of the past current council didn't get much of a review through this campaign, voters may wish to balance the candidate's message making of the last six weeks with a look back at the record of the last four and in most cases eight years.
One resource we can offer, is our Council Archive page, which traces each and every Public Council session and offers up a glimpse as to which council members were the most engaged and which ones chose to stay more in the background.
As well, there is our Council Discussion Archive that provides more detail to some of the decisions from the Council Chamber over the years.
They are not a full study of course, but if the incumbents had something to say publicly about any of the civic policies over the last term of office; they were on the record through our archives, for what that's worth for voter consideration.
And if the Municipal Council race was limited in its media attention, the School Board race has been all but abandoned, there were few opportunities to learn anything about those seeking a seat on the Board of Education, other than their newspaper biographies, advertisements and what few Social media notes came out of the campaign.
What notes we have come across can be reviewed here.
The School Board vote in the end, and perhaps even that of City Council too, is basically coming down to a popularity contest, which probably isn't the best way to select a panel to watch over education or civic affairs.
That however is where we seem to be for both the Council and School Board contests less than 24 hours before the polls open and the voting begins.
For the voters the decision tomorrow is for the most part whether the voices of the past (some further back than others) have a place in the future that is ahead for this council and more importantly the community.
The advance polls suggest a slight uptick in interest for 2022, which is welcome considering the low voter turnouts of late for Prince Rupert municipal elections.
As we noted earlier this week, the October 5th vote delivered 401 votes, an increase from the 363 of 2018.
The advance poll of this week had a slight increase as well, with 487 voters taking advantage of the October 12 polling date, a number that has edged upwards from the 482 of 2018.
The combined totals of those who have already voted make for 888 of the potential 8,970 voters who are on the voters list as of this week.
When the Results come in the City's Election Officials will be updating the results through a website home page for the vote count which you can access here.
It's a pretty simple process to cast a ballot, one which we outlined yesterday, the process of participatory democracy one that just requires a bit of interest and few minutes of your time.
Make your mark on the future Saturday at the Civic Centre.
More notes on the 2022 Election campaign can be reviewed here.
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