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Candidates please promise to not over promise

Municipal election candidates asked to not make promises they can't deliver

Here’s a simple request for candidates seeking election in the upcoming school board and municipal election: Only promise what you can deliver.

That might seem an obvious request. But all too often, candidates vow to achieve things they clearly cannot. They either fail to provide the true cost of their promise, or they promise something outside the legal mandate of the office they seek.

Call it enthusiasm. Call it lack of experience. Either way it doesn’t serve the voter.

For example, there are some fairly severe limits on what a city can and cannot do.

It must work within the provincial legislation that governs its existence. A promise to silence every train whistle within the city boundaries might sound attractive, but trains are a federal responsibility. City council can’t make them do anything. Likewise, a promise by a school board candidate to hire more teachers won’t happen without an explanation of where the money to pay for those new employees will come from. And school districts cannot, by provincial law, run a deficit.

None of this is to suggest candidates can’t have ideas or voice creative and imaginative solutions, but they have an obligation to voters to ensure that what they promise is practical — or more particularly, possible.

And we as voters have the responsibility to do the research and ask the tough questions to ensure these lofty ideas have some grounding in reality.

-Black Press