Power sharing

What does age have to do with it? I am well ensconced in middle age. I know this to be true. Yet when I look out at the world through these eyes, it doesn’t look or feel any different than when I was 20, 30 or 40. It is only when I am reminded by my limitations—needing two or three steps before I am walking fully upright, or finding myself in the grocery store, staring at an aisle of canned goods without a clue as to why I am there—do the markers of ascending age reveal themselves.

The fact is that age, in and of itself, is an arbitrary measure. And like all arbitrary measures—prone to easy generalizations and lazy assumptions. More likely to be wrong than telling of any insight.

Pages of magazines and newspapers teem with remarkable feats and accomplishments by folks of a senior vintage. They mean to inspire us, to show us what can be done. And they do.

But what happens when we all become the same age? When we are compelled to see the world in only one way.

Baby boomers have already played a massive—and mostly inadvertent—role in shaping and twisting the world to suit their preferences and desires. How is it that the Rolling Stones and U2 continue to be the highest-grossing concert revenue generators on the planet?

We didn’t set out to take over the world, but it happened anyway.

Do we risk consuming all the oxygen from another generation? Do we continue to marginalize young people, their culture and world view? Casting them out to live in their own colonies, apart?

This is a particularly relevant question in Prince Edward County— demographically one of the oldest municipalities in the nation. Simple math and biology suggests that unless we attract and retain young people in greater numbers than we are doing doing, there is a lit fuse on this place. We simply don’t have the ability to procreate in sufficient numbers, to regenerate this community.

Some things we can’t control, others we can. One way we can make our community more relevant to the fully one-third of County residents under the age of 35 is by electing a council that reflects their youth and experience, or at least their aspirations. A council that signals to this generation that indeed, this is their community. A council that demonstrates to young people that their involvement and participation is crucial to the health and vitality of this community.

The fact is, council has been, a refuge for mostly retired folk. There are many factors behind this phenomenon and little to be gained in pulling it apart. Yet it remains true that a group of people mostly in their 60s, 70s and 80s are making policy decisions that will have the greatest impact on those in their teens, 20s and 30s.

One example. Last year, without much fanfare, Council began to update the County’s official plan. This is a document that spells out how we wish to see the community grow and develop. Do we want to see more houses strung 160 rods apart on rural roads, or clustered together around some common services? Will we do more to preserve our prime agricultural land and architectural heritage?

The answers to these and hundreds more questions will define this community, what happens here and what doesn’t for a generation or more.

Who is answering these questions?

I suspect it is a minority of County residents who are aware of the status of the official plan update— fewer still are under 35. Yet these decisions will affect them and their lives to a far greater degree than those sitting around the Council table.

This week, the Times begins a four-part series that examines young people’s role in local government in Prince Edward County. We explore the detachment many feel toward Shire Hall and the lack of relevancy County council plays their lives.

The series was prepared and written by Mike Harper. Mike is a marketing researcher. He works with companies around the world—helping these organizations understand how their new product or service will be received by consumers, and to whom these products and services should be targetted.

He has applied his specialized skill set to examining why young people in the County are disengaged from local government and what might be done to change their outlook.

It should matter to all of us that we share equally in the responsibility and decision-making in our community— across all age groups.

The first step is understanding why this isn’t happening now.

Mike Harper’s series begins here.