A long-time municipal administrator says interest in local politics grew between the 2014 and 2018 civic elections.

Ernie Epp is busy coordinating council orientations following the municipal election. File photo. Ernie Epp worked as an assistant chief administrative officer in the late '80's before retiring as the CAO for the City of Morden in 2014. He also served as a senior election officer for 15 municipalities in the latest civic vote.

"The number of nominations from four years ago for the same number of municipalities was up about fifty percent. That didn't always correlate to an increase in voters, but certainly there was a greater interest in serving their community," he said.

While he hasn't had a moment to assess what motivated more candidates to step forward this time around, Epp feels in most of the instances it's because people want to make a positive difference in the community.

Meantime, Epp is busy coordinating council orientations following the municipal election.

With 48 percent of those elected being new to the job, Epp said he'll be focusing on governance and leadership during the sessions.

"Helping the newly elected people recognize that their's is a position of leadership, and leadership is not dealing with technical issues, it's not figuring out how a grader is supposed to work. Leadership is dealing with long-term issues and big-picture items," he explained. "Most of the time municipalities are dealing with multi-million dollar budgets, and they are responsible for providing service for property that's valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, and have thousands of people to serve."

Epp will also be helping councils become familiar with various pieces of legislation that will be important to know moving forward.