With nineteen candidates vying for just four Mount Pleasant Town Council seats, evaluating their qualifications may seem to be a daunting task. But given the considerable influence the Town Council has on our everyday life, it is important that we cast an informed vote for those candidates whose priorities most closely match our own. To that end, I offer the following:
To the candidates: As an informed voter, I am less interested in what you promise to do when elected to Council than I am in what you have already done to make Mount Pleasant a better place to live. As many hiring managers know, “the best predictor of future performance is past performance.” Show me your public service resume that demonstrates your involvement in Town affairs. I’m not going to cast my vote for you based on a slick handout or catchy slogan.
To my fellow voters: Get out and meet the candidates – there are some excellent ones. Go to neighborhood meet and greets, visit a candidate website or read about their positions on the issues. Ask them about their past involvement in Town affairs and what they have already done to make Mount Pleasant a better place to live. Ask about issues that are important to you – and then evaluate how informed they are on the key issues facing the Town.
As for me, I’ll be looking for candidates that have an impressive public service resume, a demonstrated history of community involvement and the independent judgment to understand the challenges we face in the coming years and support reasonable solutions. I don’t often publicly support candidates for office, but my positive past experience working with Chris Nickels on various Town committees and on neighborhood issues over the years leads me to believe he will perform as effectively in the future as a councilman as he has in the past as a citizen leader. I hope to discover three other candidates who have similarly impressive public service resumes.
Bob Brimmer
Mount Pleasant
849.1934
