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In response to encouraging feedback received regarding our coverage of the run-up to the upcoming municipal election, set for Monday, May 12, we are printing again the profiles of all the candidates (this time without their photos so that we can get them all in one paper).

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As a community paper, we're glad whenever people tell us we're helping to inform members of the public in ways that are proving helpful, and even educational, but we must emphasize that none of that means anything if you don't take full advantage of it.

This is our last chance to urge you to vote and to offer as much information as we can to help inform your vote.

With such a large slate of candidates, if you haven't done your homework it will be confusing trying to decide just who's names to select at the ballot box, so we urge you to do as much research as you can before you vote in this election. Read the candidate profiles. Call them if you have questions. Listen to what they have to say. Think about what they stand for, how they indicate they will conduct themselves in council, their past records and their ideas and aspirations wfor the city — and, while you're at it, the practicality of those ideas and aspirations. Read, too, the Community Voices page opposite this one, where we have printed letters from readers who have written in with similar advice.

In particular, consider carefully which of the four mayoral candidates you would like to see leading our community forward for the next four years and vote on the basis of who you feel is best suited and most capable of taking the helm and steering council in a positive, progressive manner.

Above all, avoid voting out of habit, or on the basis of family or geographic affiliations.

Each and every one of us owes it to ourselves and our community to take this opportunity to make our own mark on the future of Miramichi as unique individuals with minds of our own, voting for those who we feel will do the most for the betterment of the City of Miramichi as a whole.

We need a council that will debate issues in a constructive, practical, forward-thinking way. Honest debate is a hallmark of the democratic process and inevitably involves opposing views. But the key here is the word "honest."

We want to see debate based on different ways of looking at an issue in terms of the overall well-being of the entire community, rather in terms of regions or special-interest groups of one form or another. If we are to grow and prosper as a city the petty rivalries of the past must be put aside. The river that runs through our city should unit us rather than divide us.

Here's to the best turn-out of voters ever in Miramichi on Monday, resulting in the election of a balanced, functional, mature council that represents and carries out the will of the majority of the citizens in the community.