By Darrell Laurant

Published: May 4, 2008

I’ve lived here long enough to have learned a few things about Lynchburg City Council elections.

I know, for example, that hardly anyone cares. Maybe it’s because these races happen in the spring, while most voters tend to think of politics as a fall sport.

Moreover, our municipal elections rarely provide the sort of incendiary soundbites needed to excite the electorate. We’re too nice. Which is admirable, but it keeps the elections out of the headlines and buried in the 6 o’clock news.

A typical electoral turnout here is below 20 percent. Unless my memory fails me, we had a local election back in the ’90s in which less than 10 percent of the eligible voters pulled levers.

Recently, feeling woefully out of touch with tomorrow’s election to decide the council members from the four wards, I watched a morning candidate’s forum at Lynchburg College. It was not particularly enlightening.

All of the hopefuls were in favor of “smart growth” (as opposed to stupid growth?) that would not harm the environment. They supported better education, and they were against crime.

Not that there weren’t a few differences. Ward 3 incumbent Jeff Helgeson was very much against providing city money to the Bluffwalk project, which is currently treading a financial tightrope.

“That’s just blatantly wrong,” Helgeson said. “We’re funding competition for some of the restaurants on Wards Road.”

Nor did he like the series of lights that told candidates when their time was running short.

“It’s like the Fourth of July up here,” he said.

Tom Shahady, a Lynchburg College professor, is primarily a green candidate with a special interest in the beleaguered streams in the area watershed.

“I will never waver on the environment,” he said. “I will always consider that.”

The most interesting race is in Ward 4, where retired E.C. Glass teacher Marie Waller is running against engineer Turner Perrow, one of her former students.

“I think I’d have to be considered an underdog,” Perrow said, “because she (Waller) knows everybody in town.”

However, he added, “I think it’s time for the younger generation to step forward.”

What nobody talked very much about was the reason every Lynchburg resident should care this time. Based on all the usual indications, the national economy has sprung multiple leaks and appears to be taking on red ink. That will trickle down to Lynchburg sooner than later.

As Central Virginia citizens find themselves with less money, they’ll be asking for more help from an equally strapped city government. Hard decisions will have to be made.

My guess is, many of the folks in Lynchburg elections vote for the person who seems most likable. George W. Bush got a lot of support from people who said they’d like to have a beer with him. Here, maybe, it’s someone you’d like to go to church with.

Allow me to humbly suggest that perhaps these are not the times for this kind of logic. The city ship is sailing into turbulent waters, and we need steady and fearless people steering it.

So vote for the person who seems the most competent, not the person you are (or would like to be) friends with.

Nobody will ever know.