Another civic election is in the books and voters and observers alike are left to wonder; where does our municipality go from here?

Before the new councils get down to business, we took a look at the immediate past – election day in Victoria and Esquimalt.

We congratulate all the winners, including new mayors Dean Fortin in Victoria and Barbara Desjardins in Esquimalt. But at a time when we and many other organizations continue to encourage people to vote, and try to make it as easy as possible to find information about candidates, we find it rather troubling that the voter turnout was distinctly unimpressive.

In Victoria, where voters were guaranteed to elect a new mayor after Alan Lowe chose to step down, the turnout was roughly the same as in 2005 – about 26 per cent. That year there was no clear-cut, hot-button election issue and Lowe faced a politically inexperienced, albeit tenacious opponent in Ben Isitt.

We believe many Victoria voters were overwhelmed, with the number of candidates – between mayoral, council and school board trustee hopefuls, city voters had 58 to choose from – and the fact homelessness, a worsening problem that has proven tough to make headway on, was the key campaign issue.

In Esquimalt, the future of the Archie Browning Sports Centre polarized the community and made it easy for voters with a definite opinion to cast their ballot given the single-minded platforms of the candidates. Yet slightly more than 26 per cent of eligible voters did so, two per cent less than 2005, when a similar changing of the guard took place.

Single-term councillor and arena-backer Desjardins overcame confident incumbent Chris Clement to take the mayor’s chair by a healthy margin. The race for mayor in Victoria this time went down to the wire, with two-term councillor Fortin edging political neophyte Rob Reid by a mere 601 votes.

It’s hard to say what it will take to get people voting. It certainly isn’t a lack of drama in the two communities.