8 Wards may have a landslide victory due to lack of candidte engagement!!
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Despite Wrexham.com doing a brilliant job at giving prospective Council Members the opportunity to tell the electorate about themselves there are still 8 Wards were only one candidate has been bothered to fill out any details.
If I was in one of those Wards I would probably only vote for the person who is prepared to tell me what they think on the questions that have been posed to them and not for someone who cant even be bothered.
All candidates should treat the electorate with respect and give them the opportunity of making a decision about what you stand for and what you would prose to do for Wrexham.We have a number of Re-Elect candidates that have been silent and unengaged in the Election Forum on Wrexham.com. I wonder if the reason is the questions are too difficult or that in reality they haven’t yet mastered their IPads.
Derek, whilst I agree that it is unfortunate that some candidates decide not to engage. I don’t think it will make a huge difference. There are 1,000s of voters in each ward, I don’t suppose a large percentage of them actually read every word of each candidate. Also, sadly many people will always vote for a particular party regardless of who the candidate is.
Having said that, it could make a difference in wards where the result is close I suppose.
At the time of posting there are 6 of the previous Executive Board members who have not bothered to reply.
Joan Lowe, Mark Pritchard, Ronnie Prince, Hugh Jones, Bob Dutton and David Kelly. David Kelly is being returned unopposed but nevertheless, you think they would engage.
We have put up with this bunch for the last 5 years. Maybe changes could happen, lets hope so.Change will only happen if people actually go out and vote, a low turnout tends to favour the present incumbent. Maybe that’s another reason these long standing Councillors don’t want to engage!
Another thing. Some existing councillors who do write a profile, just say that they have been on this or that committee etc. Well, councillors are expected to sit on various committees, it goes with the job.
They don’t always say what they have actually achieved or campaigned for.
[quote quote=130312]At the time of posting there are 6 of the previous Executive Board members who have not bothered to reply.
Joan Lowe, Mark Pritchard, Ronnie Prince, Hugh Jones, Bob Dutton and David Kelly. David Kelly is being returned unopposed but nevertheless, you think they would engage.
We have put up with this bunch for the last 5 years. Maybe changes could happen, lets hope so.[/quote]jimbow
What makes you think the executive board wants to engage. Look at the (secret) sorry meetings no non executive councillors were aware of they held before trying to demolish the Groves in January 2016 so they could accommodate their own ( secret ) sorry see above, agreement with their mates. And a board member had the gall to criticise budget proposals in February 2017 because of lack of consultation !
You couldn’t make it up.
Also since the defection if the ( we’ve discovered red again ) brigade the response to any members questions has been curtailed and debate stifled and members of the public have to be aware of the content of executive board reports before they are published Wednesday afternoon so they can put their questions in by noo! Anyone spot the flaws and lack of democracy in that?Andrew the issue about reports being only available to the public after the cut off time to submit questions has long been around and despite challenges nothing changed. If you look back the issue existed when the Council were Labour controlled. Every political make up on the Executive have refused to change the system and give the public the right to ask timely questions. This is just something dreamt up by the Pritchard led Executive.
How many times on the Executive Board web cast has the Leader of the Council thanked the public for their response in taking part in consultations. On numerous occasions he has expressed the point on how important it is, to engage with the public.
Yet when given the opportunity by the media to engage, he has so far declined.
Practice what you preach comes to mind.
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