This Township council will be missed
Editorial

Three months this coming Sunday will be election day, meaning voters in King Township will be picking a new council to govern local municipal affairs for the next four years.

The current council is on a summer break from its meeting schedule, but they will be back at it in a couple of weeks, and we presume they will go flat out until they break to seek out support from the electorate.

All seven of the people who currently sit around the council table have indicated a desire to continue serving the local electorate. Baring an unexpected change in some political aspirations, the reality is at least one of the seven will not be at the table in the next term. And since the electorate can be fickle, combined with the fact that there's still plenty of time for other challengers to step up, none of the seven are guaranteed anything.

So before the havoc of clearing this council's legislative agenda commences, followed by intense electioneering, we wanted to take the opportunity to compliment this council and the seven individual members

on the way they have conducted themselves since November 2003.

This is not meant as an endorsement, because we have disagreements with the positions some of these people take. But while there might be political differences, we have few problems with the way this council and its members have worked together.

True, some councillors talk more in debates than others. Some are a bit more parochial to their wards than others (and there's nothing wrong with that, since being parochial is one of the things councillors are elected and paid to be). We have heard of instances where some members were annoyed at the antics of one or more of their colleagues. And there have been times when one or another councillor may have gotten under the skin of someone else at the table. There are two people sitting on this body who actually seem to enjoy baiting and being baited by each other. But underlying it all seems to be a sense of respect, and the knowledge that it is possible for people, even politicians, to have differing

opinions, but still be able to accept they are essentially after the same thing; the betterment of the community.

What a great change this has been from the last council, which was dominated by spite and acrimony.

It was a council dominated by people who refused to allow public debate the first time they had an issue of substance on their desks. It was a council dominated by people who spitefully created a committee strictly to stick a proverbial thorn in the side of one of its members; the pettiness of this move demonstrated by the fact that committee never held a single meeting.

Just about any group would have been an improvement, but this group has shown a desire to step up and try to get things accomplished.

It's certainly not a council that has enjoyed unanimity of thought, and the fact is the public would be poorly served by such a council. There have been factions among this group. There's been a majority at the table, but on most issues there has also been opposition, which has often been vigorous. But those battles have been fought respectfully, for the most part.

There have been accomplishments. The sewers are going into King City, although not all the councillors are pleased with that. A process, involving a community liaison, was set up to address a subdivision proposal in Nobleton that produced results that appear to be acceptable to a broad base of people living there, although again, some councillors aren't supportive. And there have been other things too.

The voters will have to rule in their due time whether the right decisions have been made in these and other cases, and on which councillors have been on the right side of which issues.

But we want to make sure that Margaret Black, Steve Pellegrini, Peter Grandilli, Linda Pabst, Bill Cober, Jane Underhill and Jack Rupke are duly complimented, if not for a job well-done, at least for a job that was entered into in a high-minded, cooperative and respectful spirit.

The electorate of King deserved that much.