Valley voters took their brooms to the ballot boxes Saturday, sweeping out some high-profile and long-serving local politicians.

Four trustees targeted by a concerted campaign are all gone, paving the way for a new-look school board to tackle the challenges of declining enrolment and lessened funding.

Voters clearly said they disapproved of decisions by Janice Proudfoot, Karen Charlesworth, Ken Dawson and Jean Rowe, even with her running in Cumberland this time.

We’ll see how re-elected trustees Susan Barr and Danny White, minority voices for the past three years, will perform with a like-minded Board of Education. Please let this be an end to bitter five-hour school board meetings.

The Comox Valley Regional District board, which also has had its share of problems getting along, will also have a radically different look.

Gone are high-profile directors Barry Minaker (Area C) and Barbara Price (Area B), replaced by Edwin Grieve and Jim Gillis. With Suzanne Murray not running again in Area A, Bruce Jolliffe joins a CVRD board that has almost as many new faces as the school board.

The Courtenay mayor who was a lightning rod for urban-versus-rural interests as the 2007 CVRD chair, will not be back at the regional district table.

Starr Winchester, who parlayed a councillor seat into the mayor’s job six years ago, could not defeat Greg Phelps this time, as she did then.

With Jim Brass relinquishing his hold on the brass ring in Comox, Paul Ives is the new mayor. Dennis Strand and Don Davis campaigned hard and made it a tight three-way race.

Up in the Cumberland hills, Fred Bates fought off a credible challenge from Rick Grinham and suddenly becomes the Valley’s longest currently serving mayor.

Gwyn Sproule topped the polls and the vociferous Kate Greening scraped onto council, but the re-election of Bates and Couns. Leslie Baird and Bronco Moncrief suggest there are more Trilogy supporters than one might suspect from public meetings and letters to the editor.

It will be interesting to see how Greening interacts with the mayor and others at the table.

Dissent is fine, but let’s hope this is not the beginning of five-hour Cumberland council meetings. editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com