Civic engagement a mixed bag in Mat-Su

Last week was an interesting one for civic engagement.

First, on Thursday evening, we were heartened to see a lot of that kind of engagement as the city of Houston’s planning commission sat down to decide whether to allow a re-zoning of land in the city for heavy-industrial purposes.

The planning commission is one of those bodies that it can often be hard to find people to serve on. Just ask the city of Wasilla, which recently reduced the size of its commission due to lack of interest.

The meetings are usually pretty sparsely attended, if at all.

This one was different, though. Local fire officials actually had to ask some of the standing-room-only crowd to stand outside. The tiny Houston City Hall was filled to capacity.

And, unlike a lot of meetings we’ve been to, those neighbors concerned about development didn’t let their passions get the better of them. They engaged in local governance peaceably and rationally.

It was a nice thing to watch.

But then on Friday the filing deadline for municipal elections passed. On a state level, the races for Valley seats in the Legislature promise, almost across the board, to be hard fought and lively.

That is not true on a local level. In the city of Palmer and on the Mat-Su Borough School Board there are no contested races. Two seats on each body will be filled without much in the way of competition.

Indeed, on the four bodies we wrote about today — Palmer City Council, Wasilla City Council, Mat-Su Borough Assembly and Mat-Su Borough School Board — out of nine seats open only three are contested.

That is far from what we like to see around here when it comes to civic engagement, but it’s not the only place we stumble in our civic duty.

Only a fraction of us — less than 20 percent for most elections — meet our responsibility to vote. Regardless of who runs in the primary, or the general election, as a community, our voter turnout is consistently low. That means our elections are decided by a few hundred voters instead of the tens of thousands of eligible voters who live here. This negligence further concentrates power into the hands of a few.

As citizens we have rights and responsibilities. Too often our attention is focused on our rights while we are willfully blind to our responsibilities. Voting is one of these oft-neglected responsibilities. We should exercise and protect our responsibility to vote with the same zeal with which we protect our First and Second Amendment rights.

We thank our neighbors who have filed to run for city, school board, state and national elected offices. The hours are long, the scrutiny continuous and the time spent apart from family can never be recouped. Whether we agree or disagree with their individual votes, we thank you all for your service and sacrifice.