As garlis was aware of, the town had talked about funding a program to educate Miltonians about the changes this coming election. The town chose not to move forward with that and I guess in turn rely on media in town to help educate Miltonians.
I have been around a bit already in the ward and spoke with a few people and roughly 80% of the people I spoke with were NOT aware of the changes....including the election date.
The date was one of the main changes across the province but what makes Milton unique (really, can there be any more reasons why we're unique
) is that our ward system has changed.
Up until recently we have had a 4 ward system with two councillors per ward plus the regional councillors and Mayor totalling 11. With the new changes the number of councillors dont change but the wards increase from 4 to 8 and we now have ONE councillor per ward.
This will help improve the quality of representation we get in town for many of the wards. In the past councillor #1 could defer any questions to councillor #2 if they were too busy at the time....yes this is theoretical and not a common practice among the sitting councillors we have. With one councillor per ward it will be imperative that we have accountible people who will respond to questions and be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to issues in Milton (as Zeeshan said, theres my plug for the day
www.mikecluett.ca )
Its really almost too late for the town to do anything about the ward boundary and date change (outside of advertising on Milton.ca like crazy) so is imperative that candidates get out and talk about these changes to everyone they can, regardless of what ward they are in.
You dont have to be a candidate either, just talk it up with your neighbours "did you know about the ward changes in town?" and if not...let them know.
This has the potential to make the voter turnout even worse than last time, because if people dont know who or what they are voting for, they wont bother voting at all.